So, Amnesty International are doing a bit of a phone-around recently, getting a friend to sign onto their
charity. They’re doing some awareness-raising about the situation in China, with a goal to construct huge yellow ‘walls’ all over Australia to represent the Chinese internet censorship regime known as the Golden Shield or the Great Firewall of China.
In the meantime, the blame for those pro-Tibet protesters, who disrupt the journey of the Olympic torch worldwide, is being placed squarely at the Teletubby-like feet of Huanhuan.
Superstitious bloggers have linked China’s earthquake disaster and other recent misfortunes to the five Olympic mascots, a Hong Kong newspaper reported yesterday.
This makes it so much simpler, you see.
Yingying, an antelope, is an animal confined to the borders of Tibet, which has been the scene of riots and the cause of international protests against China… Nini, represented by a kite, is being viewed as a reference to the “kite city” of Weifang, in Shandong, where there was a deadly train crash last month.
Gossip sites are full of speculation that four of the five cartoon mascots have fulfilled prophesies of doom with one more, connected to the Yangtze River, still to come, the South China Morning Post said.
Something you may not know – the date of the Olympics was specially selected due to the number eight:
Other online prophets of doom say the recent disasters have come on days that are related to the normally lucky Chinese number eight. The Tibet riots (14/3) and the earthquake (12/5) happened on a date whose digits add up to eight. This bodes ill for the opening day of the Beijing Olympics – August 8, 2008 – which was chosen for its auspicious abundance of China’s lucky number.
So, what is it? Lucky or unlucky number? You’d be surprised how profitable it is to take advantage of this superstition when doing business in Asia:
A manifestation of Chinese superstition in Hong Kong is the common desire to avoid certain numbers and to engage others. Hospitals, along with most hotels and many other buildings, often do not label “fourth” floors and sometimes “fourteenth” floors because the number “4” and the word “death” sound almost identical in Cantonese and Mandarin…
Since 1973, the Hong Kong government has been auctioning numeric (e.g., 888 ) and alpha-numeric (e.g., HK123) license plates that afford motorists the opportunity for self-expression and cater to their numerological superstitions. The government classifies these plates into two mutually exclusive categories: “special” and “non-special”… The ownership and display of a special plate bought at a high auction price reveals the buyer’s [willingness to pay] for self-expression… Non-special plates that do not meet these criteria can also fetch a high auction price, primarily due to the buyer’s superstition. (Woo, Horowitz, Luk, & Lai, 2007)
Belief in feng shui can even alter the landscape (funnily enough, this story I learnt when reading a biography of the Pet Shop Boys, when they were on tour and visited the building):
For instance, the alleged bad feng shui of Government House, which was the residence of generations of governors when Hong Kong was under British rule, was caused by the nearby Bank of China Tower… In the late 1980s, the bank commissioned I. M. Pei to build its Hong Kong headquarters. The giant triangular prism structure that he designed immediately became a feng shui nightmare for buildings located in the neighborhood of the bank.
According to feng shui principles, a sharp edge focuses bad energy and aims the energy at the spots that face the edge (Zetlin 1995). It just happens that one of the triangular edges of the bank’s building points like a dagger toward the back of Government House. After the sudden death of Governor Youde, a top feng shui expert was brought in. Several changes suggested by the expert were made in order to counteract the negative energy (Holland 1997).
As for giving up on the architecture altogether due to superstitious beliefs, some of you may be familiar with
the pictures of San-Zhr pod village – closed due to belief in ghosts of workers who were killed on the site, leaving unfinished buildings decaying in a rather attractively futuristic-apocalyptic fashion:
As news of these accidents spread, no one wanted to go there, even to visit, and the project was subsequently abandoned. The ghosts of those who died in vain are said to still linger there, unremembered and unable to pass on. The complex was left in its unfinished state because no amount of redevelopment will bring people to the area due to superstitions about ghosts, and it can’t be demolished because destroying the homes of spirits and lost souls is taboo in Asian culture.
In May 2008, “Belief in ghost month can help prevent drowning deaths: a natural experiment on the effects of cultural beliefs on risky behaviours” by Yang, Huang, Janes, Lin and Lu looked at the influence of one of the superstitions of ‘ghost month’, which involves “the traditional belief, many of the wandering ghosts are of those who have drowned or died from traffic accidents and whose bodies were not recovered for funeral. Therefore, water-related activities, especially recreational activities, are the most-avoided activities in ghost months.” I know that studies that investigated correlations between traffic accidents and Friday the 13th were demonstrated to be inconclusive, yet it appears that:
With regard to the possible mechanisms linking belief in ghost month and the reduction in the number of drowning deaths, risk compensation would be a better explanatory mechanism than psychological stress. Unlike short term fear or worry about the unlucky number “4” or Friday the 13th, anxiety about ghost month lasts for 29 or 30 days, and the believer would certainly adapt some kind of control measures.
I know from Vyse’s work that superstition is not limited to traditional cultures and you can find this sort of behaviour internationally – just have a look at the recent paper that reflects the above Asian superstitions and more, called ‘Conscious and Nonconscious Components of Superstitious Beliefs in Judgment and Decision Making‘ in The Journal of Consumer Research (April, 2008), where they conclude that no matter where in the world you are that
“… superstitious beliefs have a robust influence on product satisfaction and decision making under risk,” the researchers write. “However, these effects are only observed when superstitious beliefs are allowed to work nonconsciously.”
Despite all of this – I would like to think that human rights abuses do tend to piss off more than just the fictional feelings of little cartoon characters…
Now I’m tempted to get a shirt with Huanhuan, mascot of protesting the torch, on it. To match my one with Alakazam… the Pokemon that got Uri Gellar mad!
References:
Woo, C.K., Horowitz, I., Luk, S., & Lai, A. (2008). Willingness to pay and nuanced cultural cues: Evidence from Hong Kong’s license-plate auction market. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29. (35-53).
Tsang, E.W.K. (2004). Toward a scientific inquiry into superstitious business decision-making. Organization Studies, 25(6).
Vyse, S. (1997). Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
WOO, C., HOROWITZ, I., LUK, S., & LAI, A. (2008). Willingness to pay and nuanced cultural cues: Evidence from Hong Kong’s license-plate auction market Journal of Economic Psychology, 29 (1), 35-53 DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2007.03.002
You must log in to post a comment.
{ 3 trackbacks }