中国人迷信吗? (zhōng guó rén mí xìn ma)
Are the Chinese superstitious?
I've told a German friend that Chinese people consider dragon as a lucky animal, so many people try to give birth during this year and want to have a dragon baby (龙宝宝 lóng bǎo bao), and this friend asked me
"Are Chinese or Taiwanese people very superstitious?"
I think this is an interesting topic, so I want to share my opinion here with you guys as well...
中国人(华人)有多迷信? (zhōng guó rén yǒu duō mí xìn)
How superstitious Chinese people are?
First of all, I think "Yes!" it's true some people in China or Taiwan or Hong Kong or even Singapore (anyway, people from Chinese speaking areas) are somehow superstitious (迷信 mi xin) to some extent. However, it is not said that Chinese people do everything based on superstitious beliefs.
We got some taboos, but in daily life, we don't care very much about these taboos (or our life would become very inconvenient). Only during big events (ex. wedding, birth giving, or business launch), people put more efforts to try to avoid taboos, because those events are so important that people don't want to make any mistake.
华人的禁忌有哪些? (huá rén de jìn jì yǒu na xiē)
What kind of taboos do Chinese have?
Four = Die?
Most people have already heard that... In Chinese, the pronunciations of "die (sǐ)" and "four(sì)" are very similar (only their tones are different). Therefore, People avoid using "Four" in some occasions...
For example, in some hotels, they don't have the fourth floor... Of course, physically, they have... but they mark the fourth floor as the fifth floor. When their customers take the elevator, they won't find the button of 4(but 5)... Nevertheless, nowadays, fewer and fewer hotels do that.
A clock cannot be a gift?
Some people don't give clocks to their friends as gifts because... in Chinese,
the pronunciations of 送钟 (Give a clock) and 送终 (Bury parents/seniors) are completely the same.
Both of them are pronounced as "sòng zhōng"
If one has to give a clock to his friend, but he minds this taboo...
There is a flexibility.
He can ask his friend to pay a small amount of money (for example, a cent) to break this taboo.
And the action becomes 卖钟 (mài zhōng = Sell the clock) instead of 送钟 (Give the clock).
還有很多奇怪有趣的禁忌，之後再與大家分享 ^_^
There are still many interesting taboos in Chinese culture...
If you're interested in this topic, we can continue this topic next time.
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