Weird and Strange Traditions

There are countries that practice ancient weird traditions and for some other countries, it is so strange and odd. Most traditions are practiced in Asia or Africa, or even other parts in Central America. Here are some of  this weird and strange traditions, which of some are banned by their government and some still being practice today.For me it is weird and strange, but maybe for some, it maybe an extra ordinary tradition of their culture where their beliefs should be done.

1) Eunuchs ,Ancient China

In ancient China, castration are traditional punishment until the Sui Dynasty and the Eunuchs or Castrati, are employed by the Imperial Services, and the Eunuchs gained power and could overpower even the Prime Ministers to imposed that self-castration is illegal. There were 70,000 eunuchs found at the imperial services during the Ming Dynasty. The castrati undergo castration soon they reach the age of puberty, using their exceptional high pitch voices; but some young boys are unlucky and could not resist to become sacrifices to be castrated and no guarantee that they still have the exceptional pitch of voice after castration.

2) Eunuchs or Hijra of India

In, India some men or young boys undergo a painless surgery or castration, where their testes and penis are removed, under a genital surgery with the help of anesthesia. These eunuchs undergo castrations to become Hijra. Some go for voluntary castration but some young boys are forced to be castrated. Lucky for the Hijras that did not go for sex exchange. Some Hijras are forced to work as prostitutes, because no one hire them or job being offered to the Hijra. There is no exact numbers of Hijra existing in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Hijra’s are believed can cure illness by performing some dances and songs.

3) The Fulani Sharo Tradition

The Fulani tribe, Fula Tribe or Fulani Indians or Fulbe are tribes found in West Africa. Young Fulani men are severely whipped , called “sharo”, in a public ceremony to introduce young Fulani into manhood and now ready to take his wife. Young Fulani men are whipped continuosly by the “challenger”, without showing pains and agony in their face. Injury for the participating young boys are visible after the rituals and the “survivors”. then will be victorious and will be named courageous. These traditions are common to Fulanis in Mali, Nigeria, Nigers, Cameroon and some parts of Africa.

4) Sati  Traditions, India

An ancient traditions in India, where the widow kills herself and join her husband during the cremation of the dead, the wife jumps into the fire, and this is called “Sati”. For the widow, it is honorable to kill herself during the husband’s funeral, and believed that she will enter heaven, and become the goddess and built a statue in memory of her sacrifice. But in the late 1980s, the British government banned and imposed the Prevention of Sati Act and now is an illegal act, and are punishable by the law. But there was reported some case that sati still existed in 2002.

5) Chinese Foot Binding

Foot binding in ancient China are intensely painful and agonizing for Chinese women to undergo this practice for elegant and beautiful looks. Young Chinese girl’s have their feet bound at age four and up, by tying bandages tightly and some herbal medicines with tea where the their feet will be soaked and bound, by their elderly relatives. Bandages are kept on and changed regularly until the desired size of 4 to 3 inches are acquired. After so many years deformities and folded feet, are acquired; but to those who successfully had survived infections like gangrene or blood infections. Those women who didn’t take part of this practice are doomed and named as disrestpectful of the tradition and considered “excluded from the society” and hard for them to marry and find husband, and toes are so “ugly and not attractive”. But in 1930s, this tradition was banned by the Republic of China, but some still follows these practice.

6) Geisha Girl, Japan

The traditional Geisha girls are trained harsh and strict discipline and don’t offer prostitution services like the modern Geisha does. Traditional Geisha, start as young child and trained to sing, dance, play musical instrument and Japanese traditional arts like Origami and other famous arts. Original Geisha’s are now so rare and comes from respected family. The modern Geisha comes from the poor family and not coming from any Geisha family, and come to learn voluntarily and brought to Geisha House.

7) Seppuku or Harakiri

Seppuku or Harakiri, a cutting of stomach rituals by plunging a short sharp blade called “tanto”.The ritual of seppuku are for samurai Bushido honor code and done voluntarily by warriors who committed grave offense. Warriors prefer to die with honor by harakiri or seppuku than facing the capital punishment and suffer tortures. The ritual start by leaving a poem or suicidal note before plunging the tanto into their abdomen, and slice abdomen moving tanto from left to right motion, cutting all his vital organs.

Sokushinbutsu or Self- Mummification

Japanese Buddhist monks or priests practiced Sokushinbutsu or self mummification by eating special diets like nuts and seeds for three years, while doing some harsh physical activities to removed fats from their body. Sukoshinbutsu practiced are very exclusive in Northern Japan in Yamagata. For another more years they eat tree barks and roots and began drinking Urushi tree sap, which is toxic for human consumption because this saps are used for lacquer bowls. This causes vomiting and loss of fluids of the human body, and believed that it will kill maggots that causes decomposition of the body after the monk’s death. After the diet practiced, they locked himself in a tomb made of stone in a lotus position, with air tube connected outside so he could breath and a bell in his hand. He rang the bell everyday, so the monks outside the tomb know he is still alive. Soon the bell is no longer ringing, the monks outside removed the air tube and seal the tomb.

9) Tibetan Sky Burial, Tibet

The sky burial or dissection a practiced by Tibetans in which the corpse are being cut into pieces to expose flesh and elements or “Mahabhuta” Sanskrit,( lithurgical language of Hinduism and Buddhism) and animals. The “Jhator” ritual means “giving alms to the birds”. Sky burial rituals are common for the local Tibetans, while the “stupa” burial and cremation are for the high Lamas and given honorary funerals. Dead pregnant women, children below 18 years old, those who die with infectious diseases and accident are excluded from the Sky burial rituals. The rituals are headed by the monk by cutting the limbs, hacked the body to pieces, and hand parts of human skeleton to his assistant to pound the bones by a sledgehammers and rocks, in a pulp with “tsampa” mixtures (barley flour with tea, yak butter and milk), to invite the vultures to consume the flesh, and the pounded bones, given to crows and hawks.

10) Concubines

Concubines are the called “other woman” of any married man or quasi-matrimonial relation with man of high status in the society he is living, and legally married with his spouse. The concubines or mistresses, a man’s long term relation female lover, and their children are acknowledge publicly by the biological father, but they are called illegitimate children, and have lower status than the legitimate children of their father. In ancient China, concubines are protected by the Eunuchs.

11) Marsupial, Easter Bunny of Australia

If rabbits are famous in America as Easter bunny symbol, in Australia, they consider the rabbit as pests that destroy farmlands crop and vegetables. And instead, they use Marsupial, the Bilby as the symbolic Easter bunnies.

12) New Year’s Tradition, Belrus

On New Year’s eve, single ladies in Belarus play games by putting corn piles in front of each girl and release a rooster. The first pile which the rooster will approach and eat first, will be the lucky girl to get married the coming year. Another game they believe in, is the single girls playing with 2 mirrors and placed in the right position; one of the mirror will show the image of the future husband. Single ladies of Belarus, group together taking part on ‘fortune telling’ games t see who will be getting to settle down and have a family the following year.

13) Melting Tins, Finland

On New Year’s Eve the Finnish in Finland melt horseshoe tins in a metal ladle and melt it and if tins liquifies, they pour it on a bucket with ice-cold water for the instant random shapes that forms in water. Round shape or ring shape means a coming wedding the following year, animal shape means prosperity and a ship shape means, a travel or journey.

In Finland, the children are dressed up like the Halloween costume begging for alms on the street with weird faces every Easter Sunday and carrying broomsticks with them. In West Finland, they make bonfires every Easter Sunday, a traditional beliefs that will cast away the witches roaming around on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

14) Turkish Baths, Turkey

Turkish bath are ancient tradition of steam baths cleansing of bodies  and respect for water. The Arabs have their own style of baths with the Greek-Roman baths. Turkish has the most modern way of steam baths and used the Mosque annex building for their steam baths for public use. Hamam’s have 3 rooms for Turkish bath rituals. The “Sicaklik room or hararet-caldarium or hot room, is a large dome with glass windows so light would come in and the “gobektasi” or marble stone or tummy stone in the center where customer lay and have body scrubbed and massage. The warm room or “Tepidarium”  are used for soaping and washing the body with water, also called the ‘intermediate room’. The “sogukluk”, a room where customer could dress up, relax, have a drink to refresh them or even can take a nap in a private cubicles or room. Mikve, are the ritual cleansing baths for women.

Tellak are traditional male masseurs giving services to their customers like massage, soaping and scrbbing the clients body and extra services too. Tellak and Hamam customer used silk or cotton cloth called pestimal covering their body, wooden clogs or nalin, to prevent sliding on the wet floors, rough mitt or kese, used for body massage and accessories like perfume bottles, soap boxes, jewelry boxes, mirrors and henna bowls. Tellak are usually non-Muslim like the Jews, Roma, Greeks, Armenian and other nationalities.

Misogi, Japanese Bath

Misogi is a Japanese practice of ritual of purification of the body under ice-cold water bath or sometime use other methods of bath. Participating member of Misogi ritual undergo purifying rituals like fasting, prayers and physical exercise with periods of sleepless nights, standing on cold waterfalls and dousing practice, and begin “furitama” or spirit shaking, with hands clenched infront of their stomach, shaking them up and down, making the torso vibrating to be aware of the presents around them. Warm-up follows or ‘Tori-fune’ exercise or bird-boat rowing with incantations and prayers while leaders start praying the invocation to awaken the “kami” or spirits.

15) Egg Omelet, Haux, France

In the streets of Haux, France, an Easter tradition of cooking more than 4,500 eggs to make giant egg omelet and prepared in the main square in time for lunch to feed more than 1000 people.

16) Sacrificial Pig , Taiwan

People in Sanxia, Taipei raised the biggest pig for the sacrificial parade in front of Zushih Temple, and one of the craziest, weird and strange tradition in Taiwan for their Chinese New Year.

Before the opening of the Pig Festival, the Chinese priests drink rice wine and recite the scriptures and burn incense held in Sanxia, Taipei.

17) Chinese God Parade, Taiwan

Every month of August, the month of the ghosts is celebrated yearly and Chinese gods are paraded on the road around the Taichung City in Taipei.

18) Wedding Tradition in Taiwan

Taiwanese are very strict when it comes on wedding traditions. Family members of the bride, bring all  the personal stuffs of the bride to the grooms house on their wedding day. Most of the Taiwan’s newly weds live with the new parents in law (husband parents).

19) Taiwanese Funeral Traditions, Taiwan

In Taiwan, funeral traditions are practiced weirdly and noisy. The grieving family hires weepers and cry on microphones and say continuous prayers and traditional Chinese funeral music for more than a week or 14 days of mourning. Usually the wakes are held on the streets building with tents.

Tomb Sweeping Day in Taiwan

In Taiwan, they celebrate the “Tomb Sweeping day” , lighting firecrackers on the graveyard of their dead love ones. Firecrackers are ancient Chinese traditions lighted on special occasions like wedding, prayers, festivals, opening of new businesses or moving in to the new house to casts away the evil  spirits. They also believe that dragon dance brings good luck as blessings for every opening of any establishments.

Bizarre and Weird Taiwan Ritual

This man to be said possessed by the evil spirit, hits his own head with axe, while observers are watching the weird ceremony.

20) Duel Tradition

In the 20th century, duel are practiced between two parties, using pistol or sword and done with rules agreed upon by both party with witnesses, representatives they trust most, in contravention of law. Duel begin with challenge by the oppressed or insulted party, and to regain his honor back, he should challenged the person who insulted his honor, and take the risks of dying or be injured during the ritual of duel. After the offense, offender throws his gloves to the offended opponent and say, ” throwing down the gauntlet”.