Assignment 1-3 -Pop Culture - Journal Article Analysis

Ghost stories that young people in America tell each other are told to scare one another for the night. Most Americans do not believe in ghosts and if they do, they believe that they are simply misplaced spirits, but in Hong Kong, China it’s another story. There are many stories that revolve around ghosts of the primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. These stories are portrayed here by Joseph Bosco who is “an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the political economy of development, economic culture, and popular religion.” (Bosco, 2007) The five most popular ghost stories are Single Braid, Oxtail Soup, The Lotus Pond, The Little Finger and Room 111.

Single Braid is located on single braid road behind a Chinese bar. The story says that some boy students have claimed to have seen a girl in the alley behind the bar. When they walk towards her and get close enough to see her she has no face or has a braid covering her face so you can’t see it. The story says that she was an illegal immigrant from mainland china who came with her boyfriend Lau on the train to Kowloon. Before reaching Kowloon, she feared she would get caught without an ID in the city so she jumped from the train near where the university is today. When she jumped her hair got caught in the train and ripped her hair and face off causing her death. Lau saw this and after reaching the city and finding work, he returned to find her but couldn’t. Since then people have often seen her wandering the university at night searching for him.

Oxtail Soup is about a boy and a girl student living in Bethlehem Hall in United College. The girl lives in the room directly above the boys’ room. The girl would cook soup for the boy and after an understanding that they would not see each other until exams were over, the soup continued to come. The girl unexpectedly dies but the soup continues to come even after her death. The boy doesn’t know the girl is dead until after exams are over.

The Lotus Pond is about a girl who had planned a meeting by the lotus pond with her boyfriend. After waiting a long time and he does not show, she jumps into the pond and drowns herself out of anger. The story is that if a boy walks by the pond and sees a girl he does not know and she asks him for the time, if he answers 10:00 she will pull him into the pond and drown him.

The Little Finger is about boy student who sees a girl on a swing every day after class. He finally walks up to her and starts talking to her. From that day on he would stop and talk to her before returning to his dorm. After some time, he confided in his friends about the girl. They told him that she sounded like a teacher’s daughter who was killed in a traffic accident. In the accident the girl had lost her finger. The student went the next day to see if she was missing a finger, when he realized she was he was very frightened. From then on after class, as he walked by the swings, he would look for her but he never saw her again.

Room 111 is about a boy who wanted to go to another dimension of space so he wrapped a wire around his body and attached the end to an alarm clock. When the alarm clock rang, it electrocuted him and he died instantly. His roommate saw his note that read “I will come back soon” and did not realize he was dead.

There are many customs in China that one must understand before you can understand these stories. In China, young women and men are referred to as girls and boys. The word “woman” is reserved for a married woman. So in these stories the girls and boys are actually college aged men and women. In the seventh lunar month, according to Chinese popular religion, ghosts are let out of hell to roam the world for a month. This and the fact that they are told at night in unfamiliar places makes these stories even spookier. In Single Braid, the girl is pictured without a face. This is not scary to westerners. But the Chinese have created these stories to warn young men and women about the dangers of romance until after college. These stories are created and passed through the generations as a caution sign for those who dare tempt fate and have a relationship with someone before society thinks they are ready. In China, dating is something that is done only when one is ready for marriage. Society deems you ready for marriage when you can support yourself and your mate financially. While you are in university, you are there for the education and dating is frowned upon by parents and faculty because it is a distraction that can ruin your chances of graduating and having a career.

These stories all have a love theme to them. The stories of The Little Finger and Single Braid both have young men in love with beautiful women who turn out to be ghosts. This is a typical theme in Chinese horror movies. The Little Finger legend has a picture accompanied by it that portrays a young female holding her finger bleeding with the blood dripping directly on the crotch of her skirt. A Chinese funeral requires that the full body of a person has to be recovered or their spirit cannot rest. This may be a sign that she had not waited like her parents had taught. The girl in Single Braid was running away to be with her boyfriend which also goes against Chinese thinking. These girls were doing things that they needed punished for. This is why these horrible things happened to them.

Oxtail Soup, The Lotus Pond and Room 111 also have a love theme to them. In the Lotus Pond, the girl drowns herself when her boyfriend does not show up. This does not make any sense to Westerners why this would be a scary ghost story but in Chinese culture women who die before they are married can become ghosts if they are not properly prayed for. Their souls cannot rest so their families arrange spirit marriages where the ghost is married to a living man so that the dead woman will be cared for in the afterlife. These stories are there as a warning for young women who might be thinking of letting a boy deflower them. Another example is Room 111 that is based on a boy who committed suicide because a girl started dating someone else. His note was left for the girl. Oxtail soup is another warning put out there but for the guys this time. “The expression yam tàuh daahm tōng in Cantonese means to sip the first soup.” (Bosco, 2007) This is an expression used when one is to have sexual relations with a virgin. The girl lowering soup to the boy represents that their relationship has reached this level of intimacy. The soup beans also happen to be red and shaped like a heart. The girl dies because of her indiscretions and is taken from the boy for his.

These stories are like our Urban Legends which we know aren’t true but tend to believe them when we are near the spots they were supposed to have happened in. This is the reason for these stories. They are to deter you from making a decision based on feelings. The messages that these stories are trying to convey is that sex is bad and wait until you are married.

References:
Bosco J. (2007). Young people’s ghost stories in Hong Kong. The Journal of Popular Culture, 4(5)785-80. Retrieved from Academic Research Library Database.