User:Liangchengyao/sandbox

Chinese fortune tellers in Ming dynasty
Here I want to explore fortune tellers as an occupation in Ming dynasty. The following aspects describe what kind of technique they were using, who were their clients, what risks they were facing, and how they react to customers.

methods:
There were a great variety of techniques fortune tellers were using, and those methods can be divided into six categories: astrology, calendars, bone-reading, five elements ("五行"), dream analysis, and analysis of physical objects.

One interesting fact is that Chinese almanacs were refined significantly by Jesuits. Having witnessed a more accurate prediction of astronomical phenomena, the Ming government welcomed the Jesuits' modification of Chinese calendars and maintained the original way of predicting if a day was auspicious or inauspicious in the new calendars that were improved by the Jesuits.

Clients:
Chinese fortune tellers talked to different classes of people. Some fortune tellers were doing their business on the streets and receiving very little payment (one coin). For instance, in Ling Mengzhu's story, the main character, Wen Ruoxu, paid one coin for the fortune teller's service. On the other hand, albeit difficulty, fortune tellers could still enter the government and became officials as the craftsman in divining. In this case, fortune tellers could serve the government and even the emperor. Yuan Gong, a fortune teller who was specialized in physiognomy, successfully predicted that Zhu Di would be the emperor of Ming and persuaded him to try to take over the throne. Yuan benefited a lot from the early support of Zhu Di. Both Yuan Gong and his son were influential physiognomists who participated in national issues.

Risks:
Ending up in officials doesn't mean that those fortune tellers could all enjoy a wonderful life like Yuan's family. The Jesuits, who played an important role in reforming the calendars, took more responsibility after they were acknowledged by the Ming government. Since they became officials, it was their responsibility to divine when was the auspicious day for a specific task. Unfortunately, due to the popularity of divination in China, the Jesuits needed to do the calculation very often, and they could not understand this culture. Besides, when fortune tellers became officials. They also encountered attacks from other officials. One sardonic example was that the Jesuits, as specialists in astrology, were impeached by a Chinese scholar because of an inappropriate date they chose for a prince's funeral.

Taboos:
Among many fortune telling methods, one of them, Tianshi Dao ("天师道") explicitly limited its usage at their early period. Tianshi Dao's precepts warn Tianshi Dao Daoists that they should not divine for construction, using astrology, and divine for others, not even practice divining. These precepts were possibly written in the third century, and the purpose of the precepts was to distinguish the Tianshidao Daoists from other Daoists who also knew techniques of divination. The reason behinds the precepts was that divination was not crucial for Tianshidao at the primary stage, and this technique just served to establish Tianshidao's ritual framework.

Guilty knowledge and code:
In Feng Menglong's story, the fortune tellers were unwilling to tell Pei Du that Pei had an unfortunate fate, and when he had to say, he asked for forgiveness beforehand and refused to receive any payment. So, some fortune tellers knew that their prediction might ruin others' mood, but this was their job to tell the truth. To reach a compromise, the fortune teller in Feng's story decided to not take money from the poor customer. There is also another possibility that some fortune tellers would try to shock their clients by exaggerating the consequences of clients' luck, since Ge Hong, a famous Daoist, criticized that some fortune tellers wildly amplified the result they predicted

Sometimes fortune telling also generates killings. When Yuan Gong told Zhu Di, the prince of Yan, that Zhu Di would be the emperor of Ming, Yuan probably noticed that his words would help Zhu Di make his decision. Since the existing young emperor, Jianwen, would not just let his uncle take his throne, and after Zhu Di examined the trade-offs between waiting for punishment from Jianwen and fighting for the throne, Yuan's advice could be the last straw of Zhu Di's final decision. In 1399, Zhu Di declared the war and successfully defeated Jianwen in 1402, and the 4-year long war left many parts of northern China into ruins. From this perspective, fortune telling could be dangerous.