Celebrating your birthday in rural Guangdong, China 吊腳公

[kcchung]

Ok - me again.  I'm going through my notes and came across an interesting tid-bit I hadn't heard before.  I was well aware that in rural China, birthday celebrations were not big events.  My FIL would say their birthday was acknowledged by a red hard boiled egg to make their day special and nothing else.  They would then go on like every other day.

In looking through the notes on my MIL she expanded that even a bit further.

After she married she said ---- Her MIL liked her very much. When it was her birthday her MIL would have a chicken slaughtered to have on her birthday. In the past they never butchered or ate any of the animals they raised. They always sold it. Her friends would comment how fortunate she was to have chicken for her birthday. Her MIL responded that both her children are married she could spend more on celebrations then she did in the past.

But as a child similar to my FIL on her birthday,  she got an egg to eat.  But I was curious on the origin of the next thing she said ------The saying is not "Happy Birthday", but "Hang your big toe", as in get hung up by your big toe with a string.  I am trying to get my SIL to send me the Chinese words for this saying so I'm not mistranslating.  She did confirm with my MIL that the saying was correct about and this saying was for children only to avoid saying what age the child was.  Not sure why that was important.

I have checked online and done other searches but came up empty.  Which makes me think this is local tradition to maybe the area she lived in Guangdong.

www.writtenchinese.com/celebrate-chinese-birthday/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_red_eggs

Anyone have any insight on this saying? - "Hang your big toe", or 吊腳公

Ginny

[jasonwu]

Hi Ginny,

Glad to see you on the hunt for more information to support your family stories.

I've actually never heard this term before so I did a Google search with the words 吊腳公 and fortunately I found the following video:
tw.112seo.com/cityarticle-910008.html

The video is from a game show in Guangdong that revolves around the many regional dialects spoken in the province; the Siyi dialect being one of the many. The host from Jiangmen (the prefecture which Siyi is currently administrated under) explains that "hanging the big toe" is a reference to the action of holding a newborn baby upside down by the feet and spanking the baby until it cries. Thus, "hanging the big toe" is used to describe the birthday of a minor and the real word for birthday is used when they become an adult.

I wonder if the real word for birthday was avoided in order to not jinx the children's healthy upbringing, since child mortality was a common occurrence.

[Doug 周]

As a student of the biography (家傳) section of my clan records (zupu 族谱), this reminds me of the precaution that the posted date of birth represents the first year of age of the involved profile. This is in contradistinction to the Western style DOB being the date a person is actually born.

I believe that the DOB and time of birth listed coincide more for astrological reasons rather than for record keeping. However, I have no references for my suspicion.

Thank you Jason for searching the Chinese internet for us! There is a huge source of cultural material not available to use illiterates.

[kcchung]

Jason - now that makes sense. Funny when something you think is strange, is explained in context now makes perfect sense. Thank you very much for uncovering that gem. When I called my SIL to ask her mother about the saying, my SIL thought I was crazy until she talked to her mother.

I am trying real hard to go through all the interviews I've collected and put it into a draft story form. I found when I did that with my own family it sparked questions that I luckily got answered before my own mother died last year. Polishing the draft is easy once all the research is done.

I second Doug on passing my thanks. I actually did a search on those Chinese characters after I had my SIL send it to me. But I couldn't make sense of any of the pages that it found. So your translation is VERY much appreciated.

Ginny

[jasonwu]

Doug,

Interesting that you say that. I will have to keep that in mind when reading my jiapus. There is also the practice of saying a newborn is one-year-old at their one month anniversary, which is why sometimes we read that a deceased ancestor is one or two years older than their actual age of death.

Ginny,

To people from other Chinese subgroups, Cantonese people are the most superstitious, which is why we sometimes hear our elders use these strange terms or are asked by our parents to avoid certain things. I asked my mother about "hanging by the big toe" today and she said that she's more accustomed to the term 跌落床/deet lok chong or "fall off the bed" which, again, is used to jinx the child, this time from not falling out of bed at night.

She also reminded me of a more common term used in many Cantonese dialects, which is 牛一/ngau yat or "cow one." Once again, it is to avoid jinxing a person's liveliness by not using the word "birth." So why the term "cow one?" This is because if you add 牛 and 一 you will have the word 生, which means "birth." This term is used regularly in Cantonese period dramas.

[kcchung]

Jason - Yes I agree with the superstitions. That was one thing I had to get used to when I got married. I never considered myself superstitious and was very surprised about all the various things I had to avoid in front of my in-laws. It seemed to me that they collected superstitions along the way - adopting those of westerners on top of the ones they brought with them.

OMGosh when I got pregnant - the superstitions came out of the woodwork. I even put a page together at one time.


I'm sure others could easily add to this.

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