The other side of the lucky coin

Ancient traditions and a popular Western movie turn tossing coppers into a national passion

Inspired by the 1990s television show Meteoric Garden in Taiwan, teenagers all over the Chinese mainland stay up late to watch meteor showers when the skies permit, cuddled up with their sweethearts to make wishes from burning meteorites.

Or, you could just throw some coins. That works just as well.

People throw notes and coins at a temple in Luoyang, Henan province; at a temple in Taiwan; and at a shopping mall in Beijing as they make wishes and hope the gesture brings good luck. Photos Provided to China Daily

In days gone by, making a wish (许愿) was a painstaking process. One generally needed to make a wish by going to a monastery, offering incense and money, petitioning the wish to a deity, and even going through monk-led rituals. If the wish came true, one needed to go back to the monastery and thank the god who granted it, or "return the wish (还愿)".

While the old practices are still alive and well in China, most people needed a modern, convenient way to get lady luck on their side.

It is certainly much easier to throw coins, and as long as you believe the object you are throwing it at has unearthly power, well, you might get your wish granted. If not, no harm done.

Still, it is hard to tell which objects are deserving of your small change. The eligible objects come in many varieties and share few characteristics. You can find coins and notes piling up around ancient coffins, covering the bottom of monastery ponds and ancient wells, resting on the arms of Buddhist sculptures, and, in many cases, the choice of location is beyond all reason. These odd but common places for wish-granting coin-throwing include a dinosaur skeleton in the China Nature Museum, which used to be the office of Kuomintang warlord Zhang Xueliang and the site of a murder - not what you would call auspicious.

As for the reasons for the trend, they are something of a mystery. It may have to do with Chinese habits of dropping some change into the donation boxes in monasteries, but a more likely explanation attributes the phenomenon to a film beloved of Chinese, perhaps even more so than in the US: Roman Holiday. The film was dubbed into Chinese in 1987, when Chinese society was finally opening up and was more curious than ever about Western culture. That generation remembers the film as a classic, and the scene at the Fontana di Trevi, where the two protagonists linger to throw a coin, was translated into "wish-making pond (许愿池)", and Chinese people quickly embraced this new wish-making methodology.

"The wish-making pond" phrase became widely adopted, evolving into an all-inclusive term that includes all ponds, sinks and vats in historic locations and monasteries. Basically, any objects that contain water are the Chinese Fontana di Trevi.

This behavior was further encouraged by Chinese tour guides as a cheap way to give tourists gratification. In the 1990s, group tours became all the rage, and underqualified guides led China's new tourists through historic sites with their little red flags. Instead of offering insights into the sites' cultural significance, guides spread made-up superstitions, such as "touching the stone tortoise's head gives good health to your family", or "throw a coin into the shrine and you'll be rich". One can still run into such guides today busy misleading luck-hungry Chinese tourists with their tales.

Ponds with turtles always seem to have extra charm, even appearing in traditional Chinese medicine hospitals. In folk beliefs, turtles are a symbol of longevity and good fortune. The Analects recorded that a man once built a temple to house his turtle and was satirized as being foolish by Confucius. But we all need that sweet, sweet luck. More than 2,000 years later, the superstition still exists; in fact, it has got worse.

People chuck coins into aquariums and zoos at tortoises and turtles alike, annoying and frightening them for good luck. The tortoise section of an aquarium in Dalian, Liaoning province, is so thickly paved with coins that the tortoises have difficulty moving around. The coins shooting into water are often aimed at the animals' heads, causing injuries and threatening the habitability of the water.

Even the Amazon water lilies in Daming Lake in Jinan are considered to be auspicious - their giant, round leaves densely shot through by coin-sized projectiles. It has also been reported that a toilet in a middle school in Fuzhou was designated as a wish-making pond by the students, filled to the bursting point with coins around examination time.

Other than the pond and its derivations, ancient tombs are also considered to possess supernatural powers. This may have to do also with the Chinese traditional belief that everything, even a tree or stone, can have a soul, and if it exists for long enough, it can turn into an immortal and manipulate the tides of fate. Both Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber start with an ancient stone coming to life. As such, centuries-old coffins are also respected for their possible powers.

Notes and coins mount to high piles in the Ming Tombs in Beijing, and it is not just limited to the tombs of historically important royalty. Some wooden coffins from the Warring States period (475-221 BC) in a museum in Yichang, Hubei province, are constantly overflowing with sheer respect for their age.

This indiscriminate coin-based wish making is combined with an unusual emphasis on skill, turning coin throwing into something akin to an Olympic sport in the most unlikely of places. In a pagoda, people try their best to throw a coin into the narrowest window on the top layer. If it is a stone tortoise, people make a point of throwing the coin right into the mouth.

In the tomb of Bao Zheng, a famous judge, management was so annoyed by change that it put several donation boxes out, but visitors ignored them in favor of trying to throw coins over the bars and onto the head side of the coffin. In the case of a dinosaur skeleton fully encased in glass and on display in the China Nature Museum, people succeed in finding narrow crevices at the joints and keep the dinosaur perpetually submerged in small change. In the Shenyang Imperial Palace people were so intent on throwing coins onto the emperor's chair that they damaged the jade-ware by the chair, and the workers had to move out all fragile items.

Everyone wants a little good luck now and then. There is superstition in us all. But it may be a good idea to think about whom you are getting your good luck from. Princess Yongtai and Prince Yide from the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) rest in Xianyang, Shanxi province, and are obliged to bless those who throw coins at them, even though the two died in an extremely brutal way - sentenced to death at the ages of 17 and 19 on orders from their grandmother, Empress Wu Zetian.

It may be good to remember karma when one wants good luck; otherwise, you might end up as a mummy with some tourist chucking pocket change at your head.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com

The World of Chinese

(China Daily European Weekly 11/20/2015 page27)