A neighbor of ours recently came by to talk with Iris. After cursory small chat, she sidled in close, shifted her eyes from side to side and whispered this little morsel of prenatal insanity:
"Don't use too much soy sauce. It will make your baby black."
WEE!!!!!
This is the sort of craziness I have come to expect from living in Taiwan! Along with burning ghost money and avoiding water this has got to be one of the greatest bits of insanity I have heard with living here. What's even better, I can guarantee that this superstition is Taiwan (and possibly China) specific for a few reasons.
First and most obviously is that Chinese people are the world's most insatiable consumers of soy sauce. I doubt there is another culture that uses enough soy sauce to necessitate a superstition in its honor. Indians must have superstitions surrounding curry and Japanese involving fish, but only The Chinese would develop a superstition over a bloody condiment.
Second, this superstition plays right into Chinese fear of dark or tanned skin. Tanning has seen a marked downturn worldwide in recent years due to the fact that we have more and better information concerning the effects of the sun on our skin. But even with that information, we also know that the sun is good for our skin. It's all about balance via the use of reason. Don't worry. Taiwanese people rarely, if ever use reason to come to a conclusion. So this is not the explanation.
In Chinese culture, tanned skin is the hallmark of a farmer (or worker or someone of a lower class) who works outdoors all day and is, therefore, socially insignificant. Since the aristocracy spend more time out of the sun, they therefore cultivate whiter skin. Chinese, as with other cultures, tend to look to their social superiors for advice on... well... everything and since maintaining social and cultural uniformity is especially important in Taiwan and China, pearly white skin has become de rigeur.
You would not believe the lengths people will go to maintain their translucent skin tones despite the merciless summer heat in Taiwan. Full length jackets, pants, gloves, hats, masks and sunglasses just to walk from your front too to the mailbox. God forbid you expose your skin to any vitamin D. And don't even get me started about the girls who go to the beach and "forget" their bathing suits.
Third, the notion of tanned skin being unacceptable is just racist enough to make you uncomfortable. Chinese people aren't racist in the George Wallace, Nathan Bedford Forrest sort of way, but it's there and it's real. Black people (and people of darker tinted skin) are really looked down upon in Taiwan. There is a definite hierarchy of race and, oddly enough, among the world's racists, the Chinese racist is special. He/she is the only racist in the world who does not put their own race at the top of the social pyramid. No sir, the Chinese racist has placed Chinese a solid number two behind white people.
But I digress.
I'd like to believe that this superstition stems from a single, backpedalling source. I imagine a married Chinese woman who embarks on a torrid love affair with an emissary or diplomat from an African nation. The affair ends, as so many do, with her carrying his baby. When the kid is born and looks like a Chinese kid dipped in Kikkoman's, she explains it away to her unsuspecting, cuckolded husband as the product of too much soy sauce and coffee. The husband visits the astrologers who, naturally cannot fathom the notion of a Chinese woman having a dark baby concur that this must be the case.
Either way, if they gave awards for insane superstitions, this one would win the lifetime achievement. The idea that the color of a food could somehow transpose its hue on the skin color of the child is absurd. The fact that I have neighbors that subscribe to such absurdity (in the Information Age and in one of the most wired nations on the planet, no less) is pathetic.
Rest assured, the bottle Kikkoman's is getting used as it ever was. Iris and I will love our blind, black baby.
