Protection against evil spirits
And for the second time this month I’m saying that Chinese people are very superstitious. The other day C. came home with a branch of some plant that someone gave him. I had already seen that branch hanging beside the door of several neighbours and it reminded me of when Spanish people hang palm branches from their balconies in Easter. But it seems this branch has a totally different meaning…
Our apartment’s door cannot be more Chinese… On the left, the branch. Sorry about the poor photo quality, the hallway is quite dark.
At first I understood this plant was effective against mosquitoes, so I told C. to put it inside the house. We have SO MANY mosquitoes, even though we live in the 10th floor. I’m starting to think we have a mosquito breeding center somewhere. But he told me that no, this branch has to be hanged outside, because it has another function: to offer protection against evil spirits. As you can see, there is also a garlic head there…
So these evil spirits are a bit like vampires I guess.
I don’t know where this tradition comes from as I don’t remember seeing this branch on previous years, and for sure we never had it before. Maybe it’s some old custom that has been revived? I also have no idea what the plant is…
More about superstitions and spirits in these other posts: Chinese superstitions, pregnancy taboos in China, Chinese zombies and the Ghost Festival.
Gotta love Chinese superstitions! I’ve grown out of them now but growing up Chinese, I used to be so scared of the stories my grandmothers told me, haha! 🙈
Charmaine Ng | Architecture & Lifestyle Blog
http://charmainenyw.com
Superstitions are kind of funny everywhere. In Spain, opening an umbrella indoors or passing under a ladder brings bad luck. I wonder, is there an evil force field in the umbrella or under the ladder? xD
I’ve actually been trying to find a house flag that incorporates the requisite Chinese characters for good luck, etc. I thought that would be a nice melding of east and west but no luck yet…
Uhm, I looked it up on Taobao but house flags are not common here. However, there are many vendors who make custom flags :D https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=549402882781 Andy could design your own, haha.
Cool, thanks!
Hadn’t heard of this one Marta…another one to add to the long list.
I never stop learning new things, hahaha.
Very interesting. I’ve never know about this superstition of hanging plants (is it scallion?) and garlic outside the door to protect against spirits. Don’t you find this similar to stories in the West about using garlic to protect against vampires, ha?
Yes! So this proves garlic is effective against evil xD
I just wonder where is the bg image of this post?
You mean the image that appears as the post thumbnail? It’s just a thumbnail, I didn’t add it to the post. I took it from wikimedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts_in_Chinese_culture
Chinese superstition is also reasonable. To be honest, I can not understand why the Dragon Boat Festival should be painted with realgar rice wine, and there is also the nian beast, but the new beast is much better than the realgar, so I don’t say much about this.哎呀呀，我刚才复制错了，那句我刚拿去翻译来着，看来英语很重要
哈哈没事，我删掉了！I had not heard about that realgar rice wine before, but I know the story of the nian beast hehe.
多谢多谢
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