Upright Chopsticks

Title: Upright Chopsticks

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Informant is a twenty-two-year-old student, currently attending Dartmouth College in Hanover New Hampshire. She has lived in New England all of her life, though one side of her family is from the Mid-West and the other is Chinese. The informant is half Chinese and grew up with a Chinese nanny. Some of the superstitions she remembers are recollections of superstitions held by and passed on by her nanny when she was a child. While her mother did not mention many superstitions, others are remembered from her grandfather and grandmother on her mother’s side. Some superstitions are also recalled from Chinese School. The informant was interviewed in conjunction with another Dartmouth female senior that did not want to be identified, and after the other interviewee requested to be anonymous this interviewee requested to be as well.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: In order to talk with spirits, or get in touch with dead family members, incense will be lit and stuck upright. Sticking your chopsticks upright in a bowl looks a great deal like the incense stuck upright in a bowl might look, and thus is highly reminiscent of inviting the dead into the space you are in.
Social Context: The informant did not remember personally being lectured for violating the rules laid out by this superstition. She did remember being told about the superstition by her mother when visiting her grandfather’s ashes and lighting incense for him, though it was not in the context of actually performing or even considering the action prohibited by the superstition.

Item:

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

“A Chinese superstition is that you shouldn’t stick your chopsticks um upright in a bowl because it’ll be like you’re among the dead or more like you’re inviting ghosts in which is bad luck.”

Informant’s Comments:

The informant didn’t think she’d ever done this as she rarely had enough rice in a deep enough bowl to make this particularly feasible.
It did not seem that she personally believed in the superstition at all and she mentioned that maybe she did this often and just did not pay attention to it.

Collector’s Comments:

This superstitions was also mentioned by another informant that I did not get a recording for as I did not record their interview.

Collector’s Name: Mia Kobs

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive