I recently went on a trip to Japan. My guide books had lots of social tips on how to behave politely – removing shoes, washing yourself before going in a hot spa, expressing appreciation before and after eating, introducing your presence, bowing, drinking tea, etc.
It also mentioned avoiding things associated with death or funerals. In Japan, this apparently involves avoiding the number four or giving four somethings (since the number chi sounds like the word for death), not sticking chopsticks in rice, etc. I have heard the same with Chinese and numbers, and many similar things for different countries.
I recently bought a used book on global etiquette from 1990. They said avoid giving Canadians white lilies since this is a funeral flower. What? Never heard that. Got me wondering how many of these things are dated, anecdotal, apocryphal or just plain shyte. Wondering if you had any perspective, stories or other “things to avoid since they remind people of death”?
Lilies isn’t just a Canadian thing. A fair number of people in the UK associate lilies with funerals - and chrysanthemums: but not I think to the point of it being seen as disaster-inviting or deeply offensive, unless they’re very superstitious.
I’ve lost track of all the superstitions in Thailand I’m expected to remember. One point about funerals concerns the incense sticks you place on the coffin to bid farewell:
You must pick up these sticks yourself, buying them at a store or picking them up from a tray at the funeral. Don’t let another person hand you those incense sticks. If you do, you’re volunteering to be the next corpse! (Obviously attempting to hand someone said sticks is a big no-no. :eek: )
I take care not to mention this to other foreigners! Their Thai wives, presumably not as superstitious as mine, are likely handing the sticks to their husbands for convenience!
Calla lilies once had a strong enough association with death in the US that it became a cartoon trope. I think I last saw it reprised in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, when the weasels were dying.
I’m pretty sure that the cartoon usage is a spoof of Katherine Hepburn in Stage Door (“the calla lilies are in bloom again…”) Calla lilies are traditionally associated with with weddings rather than funerals – while Hepburn’s speech is about a death, she mentions in it that she carried calla lilies on her wedding day, and they are still a popular wedding choice.
I love calla lilies and when I was in Mexico City some years ago I bought a beautiful blue glass vase with white callas painted on it. I brought it back to the US and filled it with a bunch of artificial callas. When a friend saw it he was very taken aback and after a couple of minutes he burst out with “I have to tell you–calla lilies mean death!” He couldn’t understand how I could enjoy them when for him the funeral connection was so strong.
In the Philippines the white frangipani/plumeria flower is used for funeral wreaths (unlike in Hawaii where it’s used for leis) When I spent time there I heard a German woman saying that she would love to wear them in her hair and Filipino friends laughed uneasily and said “they smell like the dead”.
I wouldn’t say white lilies are bad luck, but I do associate them with funerals.
One other flower superstition I’ve heard is that it’s bad luck to send red and white flowers to someone in hospital. I was choosing a bouquet once for a friend and picked out one of red and white carnations. The florist advised against it because it’s thought to be a symbol of death.
When I was in college a teacher told the class when his mother got any cards that had picture of a bird on it his mom would cut the bird out b/c that meant there was going to a death in the family .
I lived in an apartment building with four apartments per floor. 101, 102, 103 and 105 and on up. They didn’t skip the fourth floor so I was in 405.
You never pass things to other people from chopsticks to chopsticks or use chopsticks to pick up something together with someone else; that is only done with the bones remaining after cremation.
Japanese send New Year’s cards instead of Christmas cards, but you don’t send them if someone close in your family has died that year, and you don’t send yours to people who have had someone close die during the year. People will let you know via cards that they are in mourning that year, so you know to not include them.
In Chinese cultures, you don’t give clocks. Here’s an explanation.
I know a Chinese woman who saved up for weeks to buy her husband a watch for Christmas as a special surprise. I don’t doubt TokyoBayer. But I wonder how universal some of these conventions are.
Soon after arriving in South Korea, I was in a meeting and I marked up a document handed to me by the contractor rep with comments from me and a colleague, and handed it back to the contractor (a local). He then proceeded to give me a bit of a mild talking to for using a red pen as apparently this represents death. Lesson learned.
In Russia the rule used to be that bouquets with an even number of flowers were only appropriate for funerals. For any other occasion, the bouquet should consist of an odd number of flowers. However, it seems that not everyone observes this convention nowadays (unlike the many Russian superstitions that people follow rigidly).
I’ll ask my Taiwanese wife since I gave her a watch before. She didn’t seem shocked at the time. I did hear about an American company which screwed up badly by giving out watches as gifts so there may be a difference between family and not.
It might depend on which dialect of Chinese you speak. If your dialect does not have this homophone, the superstition may not exist, or at least not be as strong.
Interesting. Google is not being my friend in checking the history of the trope. There are hundreds of florist and meaning-of-flowers sites. Sigh. So many sites, so little rigor.
I’m sure that Hepburn’s speech kept the trope going, but I suspect that it was relying on an existing trope for its full effect. The little I can cobble together with a quick google leads be to believe that the flower started as a symbol of fertility and vigor and at some point morphed to include being a symbol of untimely death, of being cut down suddenly in youth or in the prime of life.
One site mentioned the number of carved memorials with calla lilies that the Victorians created, but there’s no evidence given that they started the custom, only that they embraced it.
She speaks Mandarin. I confirmed the account with her.
It looks like this is the case for clocks and not watches, and the American company which had goofed up gave clocks.
My wife and I communicate in Japanese (even though it’s not a native language for either of us) and occasionally things like this happen. Japanese don’t commonly distinguish between a clock 時計 tokei and a watch 腕時計 udedokei (literally “arm clock”), calling both of them 時計 “clock”
Apparently there is a distinction between clocks and watches in Chinese as there is in English.
She also said that it really depends on the person how much they are or are not offended by something like this. There are considerable taboos related to pregnancies, for example, and some parents closely follow them while others don’t. Older people are more likely to follow customs of course.
Bottom line, watches are OK, clocks are not although some people may not care.
