My friend friend from home is of Taiwanese descent. She is insanely OCD about her teeth, and brushes them 5 times a day. I too am pretty concerned with my oral health, and after being friends for a few months, she began to pick up on it.

One day while we were chatting, I mentioned that the night before I had had a terrible dream about losing my teeth- not just one or two, but all of my teeth in a car accident. She stared at me and said, “that’s funny, my Dad would be really upset if I told him my boyfriend had such a dream”. She went on to explain,  “My Dad always told me that having dreams about losing teeth is extremely bad luck. He advised me to avoid people who have these dreams.”

It is interesting to contemplate the origins of this Taiwanese superstition. My friend had not read it anywhere, and neither had her father. Therefore, both had been informed of the superstition through the oral performances of others. Perhaps this superstition was originally created to stifle vanity? Or maybe it is a result of a more complicated cultural matrix of superstitions that combine around the pair of teeth and dreams.