4 is bad luck, Feng Shui rules and now we’re in the Ghost Festival (Aug 16 - Sep 14). Numerous other superstitions:
Things like this:
One long noodle is typically slurped on one’s birthday. But revelers beware—the noodle should not be bitten or cut as this is believed to shorten one’s life.
Seriously, how can biting a noodle on one’s birthday shorten one’s life? Did whoever come up with this taboo think about it, or perhaps they did and they are eternally having a laugh at our expense. Do the people who listen and follow this type of taboo think whether or not it is absurd? Or perhaps it is I, the skeptic waiguo who is mistaken?
One may scratch their head and laugh about it but when friends and in-laws expect you to take them seriously, it is insensitive not to.
Do you agree with the hypothesis that there is a prevailing culture of fear, bad luck this, bad luck that and inexplicable superstitions? What sort of effect does this have in terms of willingness to take risks, innovate, ask questions, solve problems or defy the status quo?
In my home country I used to be a faculty member at a university. One thing I noticed, teaching Far Eastern students was that they were intelligent and gifted but almost never ask questions. A few times when I was giving tutorials, and explaining how to critically analyze a problem, the Chinese students would say something along the lines of, “Just tell us what to memorize and we’ll memorize it.”
in USA, many place no floor 13, Japanese like me found this odd at first before learned it was Triskaidekaphobia , a odd phobia to me.
Also phobia of some cats like black cat (a big Japan shipping company is called black cat here in Taiwan) in USA, its so bad I saw big American scared of tiny cat
And Japan has some, non Japanese think odd like Sleeping with head to the north results in a short life.
Western version: 13 is bad luck, astrology rules and our biggest holiday features a flying obese man who comes down your chimney and gives you presents in exchange for milk and cookies.
OK, the West has the #13 superstition. At least in my circle of friends, no one (that I knew of) took astrology seriously. Today’s youth might be different. Santa - everyone except NORAD (the guys looking out for incoming nukes) knew he didn’t exist.
The Jesus stuff is pretty popular over there. The superstition that they can’t masturbate because an old man up in the clouds is watching is an odd one. I mean, wouldn’t the old man be the real pervert in that scenario?
It’s been my observation that Taiwanese people who were born in the 50s and the 60s and went to college around the 70s and the 80s are not all that superstitious. The atmosphere back then really looked down upon superstitious people and saw them as uneducated and low class. So people who received an higher education around that time often have a pretty poor idea about traditional rituals and superstitions. If they are super superstitious now, they probably picked those bad habits up with in the last 30 years.
I never see the 13th floor thing, because I just don’t see many buildings in the part of the us I lived in that had 13 or more floors. I guess you see this more in population dense locations like New York.
