By JIM CARLTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL
REDMOND, Ore. -- Qing Wua Chan places three oranges and three cups of wine before a Buddha altar overlooking the lunch-time dining room of her empty Stockton's New China Cafe.
"If I pray to Buddha, maybe he will take away the curse," she says.
At dinner time two blocks away, Emily Lin sits in her half-empty Full Moon restaurant, shaking her head over business setbacks she too attributes to curses -- cast upon her, she says, by Mrs. Chan. Mrs. Lin's complaints caused Mrs. Chan to be charged with criminal trespass and criminal mischief for allegedly harassing her for three years with spells. "I think it is because we make better food," Mrs. Lin says.
Bad Medicine
Call this a battle of the hexes. Ever since Mrs. Lin's Full Moon opened three years ago, two Chinese restaurants in this high-desert ranching town have squared off in a war of rice, pennies and cooking oil. Mrs. Lin alleges that Mrs. Chan has deposited rice and pennies on the doorstep of the Full Moon and splashed cooking oil across the windows and doors. Many Chinese believe the three items add up to bad medicine, a meager amount of rice and a few pennies signifying poor fortune. The oil just makes things worse.
Mrs. Chan denies hexing Mrs. Lin, although police recently did catch her outside the Full Moon with a cup of oil. She claims Mrs. Lin has hexed her with rice and pennies. Mrs. Lin denies that, but there is no denying this: Old-time residents, many of them farmers and ranchers whose families have lived here in the shadows of the Cascade Mountains for generations, are baffled and alarmed.
"This is our version of the Chinatown gang wars," says Police Chief Jim Carlton, with a sigh.
Across the country, casting spells seems to be on the rise. Anthropologists cite as a reason immigration from parts of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean where casting spells is sometimes part of everyday religious practice.
In Lancaster, Calif., last month, someone left an herb-covered cow's tongue outside the local welfare office. The names of 14 workers there were pinned to the tongue. "It was a religious act to solicit the gods to get these people to be quiet," theorizes detective Brian Moriguchi. No arrests were made, but police believe the incident was related to Santeria, a Caribbean religion based in part on old African voodoo rites.
From Tucson to Tampa
Other hexes are more serious. In Tucson, Ariz., police recently arrested Ecuadorian immigrant Deborah Vollmer and her roommate, Christina Ramirez, in an alleged murder-for-hire plot against another woman that also included black magic. The supposed victim, tipped off, called the police. Witnesses told police the women had burned a cardboard voodoo doll with the name of the intended victim written on it, after soaking it in snake oil. The women, charged with conspiracy to commit murder, have pleaded not guilty.
In Redmond, nobody can recall anything like the hex war, though a local hotel is said to be haunted. It began in early 1994, when Mrs. Lin, newly arrived in the U.S. from China's Guangzhou region, formerly known as Canton, opened the Full Moon. At the time, Mrs. Chan's Stockton's was thriving, in competition with only one other Chinese restaurant across town. "It was so nice then, no trouble," recalls Mrs. Chan, 42 years old, a fellow Cantonese who came to the U.S. in the early 1980s. She and Mrs. Lin are among a handful of Chinese among Redmond's 11,178 inhabitants.
According to Mrs. Chan, she was running Stockton's with her husband and four children when the first bowl of rice appeared mysteriously on her back doorstep. On the rice, she says, were four pennies. Mrs. Chan says rice and pennies were left at Stockton's on at least 10 subsequent occasions, sometimes with cooking oil spattered on her window. She suspected her new rival but didn't have proof. Her 12-year-old son, Chiu, says he saw Mrs. Lin hurrying away from the Stockton's back door after one of these deliveries.
Business Is Off
Mrs. Lin denies she did it. Indeed, she says, she has found rice and pennies at her back door. Both women say their businesses, already suffering, will collapse if the hexes aren't lifted. According to Arthur Wolf, a Stanford University China specialist, the Redmond incidents appear to be a version of a generic Chinese curse. Leaving any sort of offering on an enemy's back steps does the trick, he says. It invites supernatural "bandits and beggars," instead of ancestors and friendly gods.
Some locals believe that business would be off at both restaurants regardless of hexes because the town's other Chinese restaurant, Chan's (no connection to Mrs. Chan), has better food. But Mrs. Lin, 34, doesn't buy that, and she filed the first hexing complaint with police in January 1994. When she filed a second the following November, saying that hexers were leaving rice-and-penny curses nightly and accusing Mrs. Chan, officer Tom Jones noted in his report: "Guess it's time to have a chat with Stockton's owner."
When police notified Mrs. Chan of the accusations, she dialed 911 to complain about the charges and requested that police round up her accuser, according to police reports. Soon, Mrs. Lin reported an escalation in the spells, with wet toilet paper and sand added to the rice and pennies.
In Possession of Oil
A break came this year, on April 24. According to police reports, Mrs. Lin's mother reported she had seen Mrs. Chan "throw dirty water" and saw her "spitting" on the front window and door of the Full Moon. Mrs. Chan was then cited for criminal mischief and was told by police to stay away from the Full Moon. But shortly after midnight on Sept. 18, Officer Jones spotted Mrs. Chan in the alley behind the Full Moon. Although she explained that she was out for a walk, the patrolman said he found a fresh coating of oil on the Full Moon's back door, and a cup of oil in Mrs. Chan's jacket.
The police report says she admitted to dousing the door. But Mrs. Chan now maintains the oil was merely a Chinese herbal remedy she had prepared for her husband and that she was there waiting for him to leave a tavern. "In China, women aren't allowed in bars," she says.
Charged with criminal trespass and criminal mischief, Mrs. Chan awaits a court hearing set for Nov. 13. The town seems divided over who is at fault. But people agree on one thing: They would like all the cursing to stop.