Fortune Cookie #12 - Ghost Month

Red and I have moved into a new house in Hoi An, Vietnam and are still unpacking. Yesterday, I came across one of my old writing prompts.

When we still lived in America, I would save my fortune cookie fortunes to write about them later. Apparently, they have been following us around the world.

FYI: Fortune cookies do not exist in China. 

Here are the posts I have done in the past based on my fortune cookies:

1 - Lesson in Patience - My favorite one
2 - Fortune Cookie #2 - I got lazy with the title on this one
3 - New Experiences Aren't Always Good
4 - Fruitless Argument
5 - Mayan Apocalyptic Debacle
6 - Confidence Isn't Enough
7 - Opportunity Knocks
8 - Let's Get To It
9 - Whistling in the Dark
10 - Adventure is Where You Find It
11 - Chinese Beauracracy

 I pulled the first one off the top and here's what I have to work with today:

Keep an eye on national affairs

As an expat in a foreign country, this is an interesting one. Should I be keeping an eye on the national affairs of my home country (America) or the country I live in (Vietnam). Or a careful eye on both since our countries have quite a complicated (and fairly recent) combined history.

It didn't take long after moving to China to discover that keeping up with American news was more difficult from outside the country. The news I did read had a much different perspective since it wasn't generated in America and I had to make more of an effort to stay on top of it. Plus, when you are not actually there, the constantly changing political climate quickly begins to sound like white noise. I'm just not interested anymore. I've decided that if we ever move back to America, we will just have to get caught up when we get there.

As for the national affairs in this country (Vietnam), I still rarely know what is going on. I hear something every now and then that I feel the need to look up, but so often it is about issues and events that I have no knowledge about. It takes time to understand the people and the culture. I grew more and more interested in what was happening around China the longer I was there, but it took a little while to get a feel for how things work. The better I understood, the more interested I was to read the news and stay up to date.

However, I know that I do need to pay more attention. Yesterday (August 31), I learned that tomorrow (September 2) is National Day here. National Day commemorates President Hồ Chí Minh reading the Declarations of independence of Vietnam at Ba Đình Square in Hanoi on September 2, 1945. It's considered to be the day that the Vietnamese officially declared their independence from French Colonization.

This is a major, major holiday here and it would have gotten by me if I hadn't seen a random post on a Facebook forum mentioning internet quality this weekend. I should probably be up on that kind of stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, Red and I were walking into town to get something to eat and all the businesses had pulled tables out on the sidewalks. They had incense and fake money burning on the tables. Some people were burning cloth. They all had various food items diced up and spread around the fires they had built. The smoke was very thick in the streets and made the already treacherous traffic/pedestrian situation even more difficult to navigate.

Last night, the streets of Hoi An, Vietnam were filled with smoke from businesses burning paper on the street. It was so annoying.

Today, I learned that this weekend is the Ghost Festival. Now, it's really cool.

What a difference perspective makes.

— Minor Character (@brettminor) August 25, 2018

I had no idea what was going on until I got home and learned that we are in the middle of Hungry Ghost Month. It is the time of the year when Taoists and Buddhists believe that the realms of Heaven and Hell are open to the realm of the living. It is believed the dead will come to visit the living during this time and it is the time of year when the living can help to alleviate the suffering of their dead ancestors.

A local making offerings to the ghosts

It's a time to pay respect to your deceased ancestors, but there are also supposed dangers associated with this month. Thanh Nien News provided a list of things you are not supposed to do during the entire month:

1. Don’t hang the washing at night since some ghosts may notice it and borrow your clothes for a while. When they return them, they will leave a miasma which is likely to cause the next wearer a bad flu, headache or an even worse illness. Tip: A tumble-dryer will help you skip the hanging part. Modernity could save the day.
2. Never shout out another person’s name at midnight because ghosts will remember the name and later trick the person into following them. Tip: If you hate someone, such as your ex-spouse, invite them to hang out until late and shout their name at Zero Hour, hopefully thus consigning them to hell.
3. “A leg hair manages three evil entities,” claims an old saying. Dear female readers, you should never wax a limb during these days. Your leg hair will protect you from evil and all other spirits. Thankfully, bikini waxing or underarm waxing is okay during the month.
4. Never steal even a single cookie or small guava from the offerings tray before it is offered to the spirits. They could extract fierce revenge for eating their offerings on the sly.
5. Do not take any photos of people at night, especially in dark places, unless you want to have an unsolicited companion standing beside them in the printed image.
6. If you plan to celebrate your wedding this month, you could do worse than postpone it to next lunar month unless you are the kind who’d love to be available again soon after getting married. The Ghost Month is associated with bad luck in daily life, including married life.
7. Don’t wear clothes with skull and bones images because the ghosts could mistake you for one of their own and take you back with them after their short visit to earth.
8. Don’t pick up any currency bills you see on the street during the month. It could be money offered to the ghosts, who will come after you later to claim it back.
9. Don’t buy white clothes or have white suits made during this month. White clothes are for funerals.
10. If you are sick and hospitalized (maybe because you committed some of the "don’ts" above), be sure to keep the light on in your room at night. Otherwise, a wandering spirit from a nearby mortuary might, seeking out its favorite darkness, call on you.

So, staying up on national affairs isn't just abut being aware of the current political association. More awareness could keep us from getting dragged into the realm of the dead. I believe this is the most ominous fourtune I have ever received.