Ancient fortunetelling offers modern delights

The new Museworks Books' Year of the Rooster Pocket Chinese Almanac 2017 is out, and as fun as ever.

Co-translator and co-annotator Joanna C. Lee explains that the geomancer - or fortuneteller or diviner - she and her co-editor and husband Ken Smith use is Warwick Wong, a practicing architect who grew up in Hong Kong with a grandfather who supported the family by telling fortunes.

As Wong grew older and most of his Western-leaning peers were drifting away from traditional folk ways, he immersed himself in ancient Chinese divination, even while studying architecture at the University of Hong Kong.

"He looks at the sun, the moon and the stars - the same 'data' people use for astrology," Lee explained, but then adds in other "atmospheric factors", including the 60-year cycle of the "heavenly stems and the earthly stems".

"That's why a Chinese life - in the most ancient way - they say that once you reach 60, you're kind of back to starting with age 1, basically."

Coincidence that the mysterious creatures in the movie The Great Wall appear every 60 years?

"What is so fun with all of this is that people look at almanacs now, modern people, to try and look for something that is positive," Lee said.

Many of the activities listed in the almanac - rituals, digging wells, building stoves, asking the gods to help beget children, cattle rearing - may leave modern readers scratching their heads.

An appendix offers what Lee calls "a modern extrapolation and interpretation of what some of these more agrarian terms could mean now."

Making fishing nets, for instance, "originally for fishermen, now applicable for modern-day capital overhauls (perhaps an upgrade on your internet browser?)." Opening warehouses could be any form of saving for leaner times, going to court any form of confrontation, acupuncture any medical procedure.

Geomancer/architect Wong, who helped design Hong Kong's subway stations, calls his almanac a juncture of his Eastern and Western studies.

"Quantum physics shows that one thing can exist in two stages," he said. "The I Ching shows that something can not only have several stages but they can happen at the same time."

Wong also thinks things have changed dramatically since the days of his grandfather's fortunetelling, when "people may have faced an uncertainty once a month."

"Today we have uncertainties every day," he said. "Back then they read the almanac to be prepared. Today, people want something to settle their minds."

The editions are adapted for the modern reader, so the entries start on Jan 1, rather than the actual first day of the Year of the Rooster (Jan 28), and extend beyond Dec 31 to Feb 15, 2018, eve of the Year of the Dog.

Which is lucky, because, as Lee points out, the new edition includes the "hilarious" prognostication for Inauguration Day 2017 in the United States:

"Big Chill Friday 20. GOOD for destroying houses, destroying walls. BAD for hairdressing, starting a business, the maiden voyage of a boat."

"We did not plan it," she said. "Everyone was completely in stitches when they saw that one."

The Pocket Chinese Almanac 2017 is available on Amazon.

Contact the writer at chrisdavis@chinadailyusa.com