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Post by alphamikefoxtrot on Jan 23, 2009 1:54:03 GMT -5
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Post by nemesisgalofdoom on Feb 27, 2009 14:24:15 GMT -5
My mother is VERY supertitious ;D Yeah, word ! I'm not allowed say 4 in Chinese on Chinese New year. My mom were trying us to avoid the "number 4". For example no flight booking in 4th, or voting for something with this number
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Post by Micha on Feb 27, 2009 16:16:30 GMT -5
Haha... I live at No. 4 strangely enough as my family is *so* superstitious...
My glorious Chinese families superstitions:
1. No shaking your legs - 'shakes away your wealth and fortune'
2. Tilting photo frames so the Devil can't sit on them..
3. Beds can't face the door as it's bad luck
4. Often Buddhist temples make intricate paper and tissue collages of the however many stages of hell that a person enters when they die. My family spend around (RM300) - about £50 each and buy all the 'stages of hell' for whoever has died so that they 'skip' this stage when they enter hell..hmm..
5. After someone dies, they don't kill any insects - especially large moths as they can be the reincarnation f that loved one or passed loved ones paying a visit.
6. Cutting down old trees is frowned upon as spirits reside in them. (Especially coconut trees?)
7. Tie a red string from the end of your bed to a tree and a lady will appear at your bed in the night. (I think I'm telling old ghost stories now)
8.
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Post by betahat on Feb 28, 2009 23:31:39 GMT -5
I've always loved the burning of paper things that you get in the afterlife. Some of the stuff is just ridiculous though - apparently the latest trend is burning paper viagra...
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Post by TeeHee on Mar 2, 2009 3:14:55 GMT -5
I've noticed a strange trend of some old-school Vietnamese folk addressing/referring to their kids using unflattering nick names instead of their given names. For example, a viet family friend of ours…all of her kids have normal decent given names, yet she addresses them by nicknames such as "Lùn"(meaning short in height, with a negative connotation), "Heo"(pig, as he was born in the year of the pig), "Bò"(cow; don't know the history behind that one), almost never addresses them by their actual names. And I kid you not, I've witnessed other folks addressing their kids with [the vietnamese words for] "penis" and "testicles". Most recently the other day, I was watching this documentary for Operation Smile, a charitable organization that travels to different countries providing corrective surgery for children with cleft lip/palate www.operationsmile.org/ and they were showing some individual children's stories. One of them was a young Vietnamese boy named Thanh, but his parents and villagers didn't address him by that, instead they all called him "Sút"( “cleft lip”). Only after he had the surgery to fix it did they finally refer to him by his real name. This was the only video I could find of him online www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQWQlW-dN-wAnyways, baffled by all this, I asked my folks if there was any sort of explanation behind it and they told me of a superstition in which some Vietnamese people think that if they address their kids by the most unappealing nicknames, then it would supposedly scare away all the evil spirits that would potentially try to infiltrate their kids. We personally think it's silly, and if anything, it'd do more harm than good, especially on the child's confidence and self-worth.
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Post by helles on Mar 2, 2009 3:42:17 GMT -5
^ Heh. my sister is still known as 'fei mui' - fat girl by my chinese family, even tho she has lost all her puppy/baby weight and then some. But then my mum calls her 'siu bo' - little precious to make up for it.
The newest 'superstition' i heard was this chinese new year. my flat mate would not buy new shoes in the first month of the new year, as in cantonese, shoes = 'hai' which also sounds like 'sighing' which is bad luck, you shouldnt be moaning so early on in the year.
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Post by thesa on Mar 2, 2009 5:09:58 GMT -5
^thnx to God that the Korean term for shoes doesn't sound anything like sighing We were never allowed to leave the house or later, when we were older, only if we were really really really really careful, when my mother had dreamt of her deceased father the night before. Same was when dreaming of teeth... Both have rubbed off on me. Whenever I dream of my deceased grandparents I'm very cautious the next day. When someone dies, their ghost will still be around you for 6 weeks. So even if you can't say good-bye to them before they die, you'll have a chance to do so later. Don't buy your girlfriend any shoes, coz she'll run away with them (don't know if it also applies to boyfriends) and a last one: our mom always stroked our noses so that the bridge would get higher and narrower when we were babies (didn't work out tho, haha)
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Post by thesa on Mar 5, 2009 12:34:11 GMT -5
Just remembered another one: Koreans say that you've got lots of 'hot' thoughts if your hair grows really fast. My Chinese colleague said something similar about Chinese hair. Anyone else heard this?
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celltocell
Full Member
get your blood moving
Posts: 218
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Post by celltocell on Mar 6, 2009 22:09:56 GMT -5
dont cry on the chinese / vietnamese new year...or you'll be crying for the rest of the year [bad luck]. well, i think it's either a coincidence or it came true. my years been retarded!
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celltocell
Full Member
get your blood moving
Posts: 218
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Post by celltocell on Mar 6, 2009 22:10:41 GMT -5
i've never heard of this and i'm part vietnamese. and most vietnamese people are not catholic, they are buddhist. Vietnamese tradition holds spending more than $5 for something means you go to hell. since all vietnamese are catholics this is serious business.
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celltocell
Full Member
get your blood moving
Posts: 218
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Post by celltocell on Mar 6, 2009 22:11:13 GMT -5
HAHA! only in california, not new york. Vietnamese tradition holds spending more than $5 for something means you go to hell. since all vietnamese are catholics this is serious business. No wonder those Banh Mi are so cheap...
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Post by LaFace on Mar 7, 2009 5:10:38 GMT -5
i've never heard of this and i'm part vietnamese. and most vietnamese people are not catholic, they are buddhist. How would define, 'most'? I know quite a significant number of Vietnamese Catholics, although the number/proportion isn't anywhere near what it is for Filipinos (to name another Asian country), which is very high. Perhaps it depends on where in Vietnam the family originates from? I'm not sure.
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Post by Emily on Mar 7, 2009 6:31:17 GMT -5
^ According to the Catholic Hierarchy Catalog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_Vietnam), 6.87% of Vietnam's population is Catholic.
Not a majority, but still significant, fourth Catholic country in Asia.
I've been told the Catholics are usually from the South. The wiki article and this site (http://www.hotelvietnamonline.com/culture/catholicism.htm) give some interesting historical insight on the reasons behind this.
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Szymon Von Zalyn
Full Member
50% Polish of Prussian descent, 25% Italian, 25% kalmyk, but 100% English.
Posts: 367
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Post by Szymon Von Zalyn on Mar 7, 2009 8:27:03 GMT -5
Haha... I live at No. 4 strangely enough as my family is *so* superstitious... My glorious Chinese families superstitions: 1. No shaking your legs - 'shakes away your wealth and fortune' 2. Tilting photo frames so the Devil can't sit on them.. 3. Beds can't face the door as it's bad luck 4. Often Buddhist temples make intricate paper and tissue collages of the however many stages of hell that a person enters when they die. My family spend around (RM300) - about £50 each and buy all the 'stages of hell' for whoever has died so that they 'skip' this stage when they enter hell..hmm.. 5. After someone dies, they don't kill any insects - especially large moths as they can be the reincarnation f that loved one or passed loved ones paying a visit. 6. Cutting down old trees is frowned upon as spirits reside in them. (Especially coconut trees?) 7. Tie a red string from the end of your bed to a tree and a lady will appear at your bed in the night. (I think I'm telling old ghost stories now) 8. All of the above reminded me of a boy I knew at school called Carl. He was not eurasian but caucasian and he was so superstitious that he genuinely believed that if someone mentioned or discussed the possibility of it raining, it would happen He then said to me once, "If it rains, I am blaming you " I kid you not ;D I used to think that we was just a wind up merchant but it appeared that after 5 years or more after leaving school, he was still getting angry at the mention of rain Apparently, Carl's parents were the same and they came out with worse superstitions that would embarass an Asian ;D
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Post by votingblogger on Mar 8, 2009 15:56:57 GMT -5
When I have a passing away on the white side of the fam, I'm not allowed to see the chinese side for a full month because it will bring bad luck and it's suppose to be a time for mourning. I thought that was interesting.
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