4 month blessings
I’m 4 months old today. A common Taiwanese tradition for this day is 收涎 (’Shu Noire’ in Taiwanese) which approximately means ‘remove saliva’ (sounds lovely doesn’t it?). As you can see, this is a tradition that has been passed down from Mother (photo on the right) to Son (photo on the left).
On the babies 4-month anniversery, he is given a necklace of cookies (as you can see), and then goes to visit friends, relatives and neighbours. Each of them breaks off a cookie, symbolically touches my chin with it and says one of the following simple blessings (in Taiwanese):
- I take your saliva away so you can say ‘Daddy’ soon
- I take your saliva away so you will have a little brother soon
- I take your saliva away so you can come top in your exams
It loses a little bit in translation 
Since this is purely a Taiwanese tradition, several of the non-Taiwanese speaking people we came across had to have things explained to them and had to be coached as to what they should say! I suspect when Mummy did this (in the last century) in Pingtung everyone knew what to say…
