Last December, the South Korean government found itself walking a tightrope while planning to join the international troops in Afghanistan.
It was a complexity created by a number—number “4” to be precise.
As it happened, South Korea was the 44th member to join the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force fighting the insurgents in Afghanistan. The number “44” bothered the government.
Like the Chinese, Koreans dread the digit “4” as its phonetic sound is similar to that of the word “death”. And South Korea simply didn’t want that number labelled on its troops, fearing recurrence of the 2007 incident, when Taliban militants brutally murdered two Korean missionaries.
“We’re tiptoeing around the issue, and we don’t need complications, especially those that could possibly aggravate public sentiment,” The Korea Herald quoted one foreign ministry official. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed so that the other two countries (that have applied along with us), or even just one of them, gets the nod first.”
Like in South Korea, superstition has been deeply ingrained in most of Asian societies. Every culture has its own list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ based on the beliefs that have been passed on by ancestors.
You may have noticed that in many countries in the region, most of the elevators simply do not have numbers “4” or “13”. There are also countries where people just stop driving or walking when a black cat crosses their path; they only continue after others have overtaken them first. And there are societies in the region that believe sweeping floors or cutting nails at night bring bad luck.
Lately, a new trend is catching up among young girls in China: matching horoscopes before jumping into a relationship. All they’d do is flip through the pages of books on zodiac signs or do some research in the internet to find out their perfect match.
Well, looks like, fewer and fewer people are willing to go through all the Mr Wrongs to finally find a Mr Right, Wang Chao recently wrote in her China Daily column. Or probably, they’ve learnt how to use their time efficiently and do not want to waste considerable number of days on a wrong guy, while the spark of their beauty fades, she reckoned.
But Wang herself believes happy relationships always take time to build and maintain, and asks everyone to “have some faith and trust your heart”.
Will her message be heard in a fairly superstitious country like China is not known, but few other developments indicate that many Chinese have started defying the myths impregnated in their societies.
One example is preparations Chinese couples are making to tie the knots in the Year of the Tiger, despite knowing it is a “widow’s year”.
According to the Chinese belief, a widow’s year is a year that does not have a first day of spring—like the upcoming Tiger Year, which began on February 14. (The lunar spring began on February 4.)
“(So 2010) is believed to lack yang or masculine energy to balance the feminine yin. And to Chinese women, no yang means no husband, which makes a woman a widow,” China Daily reported.
But surprisingly, many Chinese are not willing to buy the age-old dictum—at least not this time. And one of them is 24-year-old Tan Jinjin, who has been in a relationship for five years and doesn’t mind getting married this year.
Tan recently told China Daily: “If no one wants to get married in widow’s year, I may get cheaper cars, cheaper hotels and a cheaper ceremony, so why not?”
Now, take a look at these statistics. Wang Haoyuan, manager of Qianyijia, a wedding service company in China, said his company, so far, has only seen less than 10 per cent of wedding bookings being cancelled this year because of the myth associated with the widow.
The case is the same with another Chinese wedding organising company, Red Lily. It saw around 20 per cent of wedding ceremonies planned for this year being postponed.
“I don’t think the widow’s year will ruin my business. I’ve already got some wedding ceremony bookings for next April and May,” says Wang Jiahua, boss of Red Lily.
But this story doesn’t end here as the Year of the Tiger has opened its door with another caveat. This one’s related with the birth of a female child.
Girls born in the Tiger Year are believed to be fierce, rebellious, ill tempered and unpredictable, The Straits Times recently quoted geomancers as saying.
This belief is expected to affect the birthrate even in a modern and cosmopolitan city state like Singapore, where almost 80 per cent of the population comprise people of Chinese origin.
National University of Singapore Chinese studies professor Lee Cheuk Yin recently told The Straits Times: “We cannot conclusively trace the origins of the beliefs that people take after the characteristics of their zodiac signs.”
Nevertheless, the belief is so deeply entrenched in many parents’ mind they either postpone their plans of having a child or induce births one to two weeks earlier, especially if their child is a girl.
In the last Tiger Year in 1998, for instance, Dr Beh Suan Tiong, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Beh’s Clinic for Women at Thomson Medical Centre in Singapore, had received about five birth induction requests.
But so far this year he received only one such request – an indication that many are skeptic about the relationship between children’s personality vis-a-vis the year they are born.
“It is the children’s upbringing and education that determine their behaviour. If you want to train your child to be demure and ladylike, you have to train her from young,” says Amanda Khan, a catering manager, who is five months pregnant.
Khan and her husband Kevin Wong, assistant director at Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore Vessel Traffic Management, are not worried that their first child, a girl due in May, might grow up to be a fierce, rebellious and ill-tempered woman.
The voices of Khan, Wong, Wang and Tan, may not be powerful enough to create a ripple effect in Asia but they certainly bear some substance. And people like them are gradually changing our societies.
By the way, as for the South Korean government, it decided to deploy the troops in Afghanistan disregarding the belief associated with “deadly” number. With reports from China Daily, The Korea Herald and The Straits Times
