Superstition in China

Which superstitions are widely held in the US in your opinion?

Brits tend to believe, rightly or wrongly, that Americans have innumerable allergies that don't really exist.

I'd just flown back from Korea one time and was telling some Chinese students about Korean fan death (you can't leave a fan on overnight or you die). They thought it was hilarious. At this point I was dripping huge amounts of sweat, teaching in a small room with no AC and too many people.  I was literally dripping on the desks.  I stood right in front of the fan.

My top student, and interesting guy who knew more world geography than most people put together (he was a geography major) pulled me away.  "You'll catch a cold!"
"How?", I asked, pointing out that the cold is caused by a virus.
"No, no, no", he said - then informed me that he knew for a fact that temperature differences cause colds, and that he should know since he was a doctor. And the other students all backed him up.

I'm a little superstitious about doctors who studied geography rather than medicine.

Anyway, I'm off now to increase my internal heat   

About the ice vs. heat on the foot thing, going hobbling to my classes this afternoon, I had an extra 5 minutes to think and decided I'd warm them up (*pun*) with my sad story and the "medical advice" I had received.

Whaddya know, most of the students were shaking their heads and saying, "No! Cold water!" when I relayed to them the advice I had been given-before I even had a chance to mention ice-packs. They already knew it. And they are English majors, not nursing or medical students.

My faith in China's future, as evidenced by my own students, went up a few notches today. And my foot wasn't hurting nearly as much at the end of classes as it was after the walk across campus to begin class.

Next up - my War against Umbrellas.

Hey! Leave umbrellas alone!

On my first day in China some moons ago I met an Aussie teacher who was trying to explain to the locals what an umbrella is for. But as one of those Brits who had to study Latin at school I had to agree with the the locals. 

An umbrella is a sunshade.

Some ingenious Brit realised that a sunshade could be used as a rain shield. Note, 'shield'.

Likewise, some ingenious Roman realised that the principle applied to chariots - the whole point of spokes is to damage other people!

Umbrellas are excellent weapons.

No EL, you clearly don't understand the dangers of going to bed with wet hair! If you do every day, well, you won't live to be 60. They told me you only have to do it ONCE, then.....
 

....60 years later.

But I can remember going to bed with wet hair when I was very young.

China's got a strange mixture of science and superstition.  Just about everyone I've ever discussed religion with in China is an atheist, but almost every one of them observes lots of old religious practices.  Some of it is just traditional I guess, like the complex funeral rituals and tomb sweeping stuff.  They don't believe in an afterlife but burn paper money to benefit the dead in their, um, afterlife.
My theory is that they are not naturally very questioning and accept as gospel what their parents, grandparents and teachers tell them.  These things may be contradictory, but western logic doesn't apply here, ha ha!

When I'm at home for Christmas, I go to the odd carol concert and sing the old songs if I'm alone in he house. (Me + singing + audience = not good. I promised one class that I will sing for them next year an hour after applying for a job in Poland.) But it doesn't seem strange to me that people would carry on with the rituals long after the belief has vanished. Hell, that's why the Church of England is still in business! (That and the massive property portfolio.)  

Mind you, one Chinese teacher I know believes that she has seen aliens. That would be strange enough, but she wears glasses that are about half an inch thick. A great person and blind as a nonogenarian bat with cataracts.  Another Chinese teacher is fascinated by TCM. He believes that it's possible to cure oneself of anything by studying and practicing meditation. Still, I know a couple of people in the UK who believe seriously in ghosts - again, clever people, though people who have got their education from largely non-academic sources.

Okay, I know some strange eccentric interesting types.

As for widespread Western superstitions, does homeopathy count?

Going to bed with wet hair is not a good idea, unless you like looking like this fella  . Get the industrial strength gel out though and Bob's your uncle after an hour of sculpting.

Me mamma always said that going ta bed with wed 'air would make mold grow on me scalp from it bein' constant wet like, she'd also said dat it wasn't no good for me pillow cause it never got dried and little mold spores and stuff wood grow aye.

my mother used to tell us not to 'pull faces'  meaning sticking out tongues at our siblings  etc.  as the wind will change and we will look like that all the time. She quickly stopped when i pointed to a guy with a contorted facial impediment and said look the wind must have changed when he was pulling a face.

Quote from: mkate on April 13, 2011, 09:13:37 PM

Me mamma always said that going ta bed with wed 'air would make mold grow on me scalp from it bein' constant wet like, she'd also said dat it wasn't no good for me pillow cause it never got dried and little mold spores and stuff wood grow aye.

my mother used to tell us not to 'pull faces'  meaning sticking out tongues at our siblings  etc.  as the wind will change and we will look like that all the time. She quickly stopped when i pointed to a guy with a contorted facial impediment and said look the wind must have changed when he was pulling a face.

A well meaning family member once tried to explain different skin colours to me by using the different types of chocolate - dark chocolate, milk chocolate etc.

Subsequently I tried to 'eat' the first Aboriginal man I ever saw when I was about 4 or 5. Surprisingly it went down rather well 

My theory is that they are not naturally very questioning and accept as gospel what their parents, grandparents and teachers tell them.

I asked someone about why they did something (can't remember what it was, but it had something to do with ancestral worship) and they said they did it to please their parents... 

Well my mamma used to say that if you sneeze in the middle of a sentence, you were going to tell a lie.

But for some reason it didn't apply to her sneezes

Arthur C Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic

Gregory Benford: 

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

Stevie Wonder:

When you believe in things you don't understand

Well they would say that, wouldn't they? Clarke and Benford are both scientists who turned to writing scifi, and Stevie Wonder was, well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad, right?

One aspect of this that interests me is the role of the expert authority, both in our hosts' culture and in our own cultures. Why do we believe experts, and what do they have to do to lose our faith? Certainly the dominant mythologies present in each civilization serve largely to protect the dignity and authority of that culture's high priests, whoever they may be and whatever they may call themselves. coming from outside our hosts' culture makes it easier for us to see the incongruities in their belief system, just as it is easier for them to see th inconsistencies in ours when (if) they have a chance to become familiar with ours.

I once had a student (about 18) ask what's the difference between myth, superstition and religion. As an on the spot question, I had a hard time giving a solid, honest and intelligent answer without the benefit of time to think about it. After going home to ponder it, I'm still not sure of the answer

I once had a student (about 18) ask what's the difference between myth, superstition and religion. As an on the spot question, I had a hard time giving a solid, honest and intelligent answer without the benefit of time to think about it. After going home to ponder it, I'm still not sure of the answer

My personal definition - If it's a cool story that no one takes literally anymore, it's a myth - Virtually no one believes in the Greek or Norse myths anymore - they may have been religions once, but they've fallen to the level of myths. One should also note the presence of the phenomenon called urban myth, which is an improbable, but cool story often believed by many and that requires the combined efforts of Jamie and Adam to disprove it.

If it's your belief system, it's superstition.  If it's mine, it's religion.

More seriously, a superstition could be a belief that has little/no factual basis and (usually) not directly tied into religious beliefs.  It's often (but not always - I'm sure someone has some counter-examples) possible to apply a little science to show that a superstition isn't true.  For example, we blindfold 1000 people and randomly have them walk down one of two paths.  One is just a path.  The other has them walk under 5 ladders while 13 black cats cross the path.  We can then follow these people and monitor them for health and employment status changes and (hopefully) show that there is no statistically significant difference.

A religion is typically based on faith and isn't very easily placed under scientific scrutiny (ok, some specific elements may be testable, but general faith in divinity isn't so simple to deal with in the lab).  If I believe that God set off the big bang, it won't be easy to design an experiment to prove me wrong (or right).  If I believe that God delivers divine messages via the Pope, some Buddhist leader, or directly from Raoul, it won't be easy to prove this to be incorrect, unless one of these messengers decides to make statements that are subject to independent verification.  If I believe that the afterlife is an eternal foot massage administered by the prettiest possible Chinese girls, you can hope I'm right and even join me in this belief, but you probably can't prove or disprove it.

The impotus should be on the followers of the superstition to prove it, not on sceptics to disprove it. Why should I have to prove that every superstition is misguided?

You may say, what's the harm? Let people believe what they like, but if people present superstition as fact then they should be obliged to back it up. It really doesn't matter if people believe that a certain colour is unlucky or putting one sock on before the other helps them to score goals, but throughout history people have died because of superstition.

Obviously I feel strongly about this, but from a China perspective, my question is this. Is my western rationalism objectively good, or is it just a cultural difference. I mean, I've obviously already made up my mind, but I'm open to other's opinions; provided they're backed up by empirical evidence of course.

You can substitute "religion" for "superstition" in your post, and have a parallel argument.