Tag Archives: Superstition

Taiwanese superstition: The Colour Red

Nationality: Taiwanese
Primary Language: Taiwanese, Mandarin
Age: 46
Occupation: Branch Manager
Residence: Taipei, Taiwan
Performance Date: 19 April 2024

Tags: asia, superstition, red, colour, lucky

Text:

Red is considered a very lucky colour in Asian countries, being a sign of good fortune and luck. People wear red clothes on Lunar New Year and give red envelopes full of money to the younger ones. The colour red was said to scare off the fearsome beast Nian, who’s story is the legendary backdrop for Lunar New Year in general. Lots of people wear red underpants when they gamble.

Context:

C was born and raised in Taiwan, and has traveled the world various times due to her work and studies. She regularly participates in Taiwanese and Asian festivities with friends and family, and is said to be quite lucky whenever she wears her red dress.

Analysis:

Like with Lunar New Year, I write Taiwan in the title, but the superstition covers a large portion of Asia as well. Red can be contrasted with thoughts in the West, as red can be seen as a sign of aggression or anger, while green is the colour of luck and good fortune due to being the colour of money. This goes to show how a similar concept (colour) can twist and change within various cultures based on their pasts and histories.

Folk Belief: On Money and Hands

Context:

Informant E is a 21 year old USC student studying American Studies and Ethnicity. She identifies as Chicana and and was born and raised in the greater Los Angeles area. E is a junior at the university and is the interviewer’s roommate.

Text:

E: “So if my right hand – the palm of my right hand – is itchy, I put it in my pocket, because it means I’m gonna get money. If the left palm/hand is itchy, that means I owe someone money. So I have to scratch it.”

Interviewer: “Did you learn this from someone?”

E: “My family.”

A friend, also in the room: “If you scratch it does it mean that you don’t owe them money?”

E: “Like I’m not gonna get – it could mean, like, ‘Oh I have to pay rent soon,’ so it’ll start itching. Or I have to go pay someone back because they took me out to go eat. So then that means I have to get them back.” “If I scratch my hand, I don’t have to pay them back. Sometimes.”

Interviewer: “So who taught you this?”

E: “My grandma and then my grandma taught my mom and then me.”

Interpretation:

E’s folk belief is a kind of self-soothing ritual and, though a bit more complicated, I would compare it easily to knocking on wood or throwing salt over one’s shoulder. It’s clearly been passed down to her as familial knowledge. I did search for more information online and found that the superstition originates in the Caribbean which, although not part of Latin America, is close to it, and the belief itself seems to have spread easily throughout the world. I find it interesting that this belief has to do with hands, as I feel there’s a through-line in history. Bartering relied heavily on hands, and handshakes or palms are often symbols of such agreements. Trade and bartering then became money or payment, which is still then associated with hands, and is what I would argue led to this superstition. In general, money obviously is a good thing to have and a bad thing to lose, so this self-soothing ritual can be comforting and seems so common because of that universal truth about the value of money. The scratching part of this belief makes it a ritual or a form of jinx (re: like knocking on wood) in my opinion, as the participant is doing something tangible, as if to put the belief into effect.

Cutting Hair for Chinese Lunar New Year 

Informant Details

  1. Gender: Female
  2. Occupation: Student
  3. Nationality: Chinese-American

Folklore Genre: Holiday Ritual/Superstition

  1. Text

The informant explained a ritual done for the Chinese Lunar New Year. She said that people are supposed to cut their hair before the new year, and then not cut it for a while after the new year. It doesn’t matter how much is cut off – it can be just a trim. Sometimes she will go to a salon, but other times she cuts her hair herself. She has done this every year for as long as she can remember. Both women and men partake in this tradition. If you don’t cut your hair, the superstition is that you are carrying all of the bad things that happened to you in the past year into the new year. So, if you don’t cut your hair then you bring bad energy and bad luck into your future.

2. Context

The informant’s understanding of this ritual is that it signifies “out with the old, in with the new” because you cut off your dead ends to make room for the new growth in the new year. The informant was taught this ritual as a young child. She learned this from her Grandmother, who is from Guangzhou, China.

3. Analysis

This ritual embodies the principles of contact magic. The hair is believed to carry the energy of the past because it grew during that time period. By cutting off the ends of this older hair, the individual is able to move forwards without the weight of the past. In International Folkloristics, Dundes says “With Contact or Contagious magic, one can carry out an action on an element that was once touched by or connected to the designated target of a magical act.” (186) In this example, the hair was connected to the individual’s past. Therefore, cutting the hair is analogous to cutting energetic ties to the past.

Girls locker room sink

Context: SS, a girl attending high school in Los Angeles shared this legend of an incident that happened in her high school that had been passed down through the years to the people occupying the girls locker room. She had heard this story from her peers but it was viewed as common knowledge to the girls at her school.

Text: “ There was this high school legend that in the girls locker room a girl slipped, fell and cracked her head on one of the porcelain stand alone sinks and nobody knew who it was or when it happened but it was common knowledge amongst everyone, especially the people in sports because the people who were on teams had their own lockers. Because of this legend everyone avoided the sink furthest to the right in the locker room and it was seen as bad luck if you were to use it” 

Analysis: I believe this locker room legend’s lack of specific details, including the girl’s identity or time of the incident, allows for a heightened sense of mystery and adaptability of the story. It makes the plot timeless, being easy to pass down in the future to younger year groups as they adopt the locker room whilst also fostering a sense of community amongst the girls sharing the locker room as they share this superstition of the unlucky sink. Whilst the legend works as a cautionary story to prevent people from acting recklessly near the sink, a sink is not an innately dangerous object, so the outcome of this legend serves solely to make people superstitious about using it.

Hold Your Breath!

‘When I was younger my parents and older siblings taught me the superstition that whenever we had to drive across a bridge, it was necessary to hold your breath or else the bridge would collapse underneath us. I still do it now, even though I know the bridge obviously won’t collapse, but what if it does because I wasn’t holding my breath?!’ – NZ

This superstition has had a grasp on NZ as long as he can remember; a hold so tight, he refuses to not hold his breath if he has to drive across a bridge. He also shares this superstition and ritual with his friends, also forcing them to partake in it. NZ can’t remember a single time he did not hold his breath going over a bridge, “the ritual has practically taken over my life” he emphasizes. He also grew up in New York, a state with many bridges, thus this tradition was fully engrained in him from a young age driving around with his family. NZ also plans to continue to share this superstition with friends, and one day “trick” his own future kids into holding the same ‘bridge-crossing’ ritual.

My first impression was that my own father actually taught me the same superstition; a superstition I have not met many other people to have! Superstitions in folklore have long existed and take hold to prevent misfortune and bad luck among communities. While this superstition did not have a community wide affect, it is a familial folk belief that has been passed down to yet another generation, as NZ’s parents learned it from their parents and shared it with each other when they first met. This superstition is a classic example of oral tradition, and also folk beliefs in supernatural forces. For example, there must be some supernatural force to make a bridge collapse, so holding your breath will prevent it, much like knocking on wood to un-jinx something.