With the arrival of the new year, what will be the best time on New Year's Eve to pay respects to ancestors? When do you light the incense and open the door on the first day of the year? After the holiday, what is the most auspicious day to reopen your shop? For thousands of years Chinese have been meticulous about how best to greet the new year in order to ensure good fortune and prosperity.
What are the underlying principles for "calling forth auspiciousness and avoiding evil"? To find the answers, why not take a look through the Chinese almanac?
Several years ago, when the Taipei City Council was about to move into its new chambers, every effort was made to select a day deemed to be auspicious under the Chinese zodiac. On the day they eventually chose, a major typhoon hit, and the TCC was scathingly ridiculed by commentators.
A half year ago, when Taiwan Semiconductor-one of the leading high-tech firms on the island-first broke ground in the Tainan Science Park, they also were careful to choose an auspicious day.
But don't rush to blame these politicians and high-tech folk for being "superstitious." In fact, though few people pay attention to the day-to-day advice of the almanac-things like "Today is not a good day to leave the house" or "It's an auspicious day to visit someone who is sick"-who doesn't pick a good day for their wedding day? Even if both parties to the marriage no longer pay attention to the old rules, their parents, relatives, and even the restaurant where the reception is being held will all want to check the almanac's advice. "So," concludes Huang Yi-nung, a professor in the Graduate Institute of History at Tsing Hua University, who has done a great deal of research into almanacs, "why offend people?"
Lu Li-cheng, director of the office of exhibitions at the Taiwan Museum of Prehistoric Culture, who has done a study on "The Recognition and Categorization of Time" among various peoples, stresses that choosing an auspicious day is by no means something for the foolish. Everyone from the emperors of yore to the official elite of today subscribe to these beliefs. "Go ask whether or not they check the almanac for a good day when the president goes out of the country. Even if the president himself doesn't check, his secretary will."
Harmony with the universe
The Chinese have a special term for this process: zeri. It literally means "choosing a day," but implies the whole pseudo-science of determining the character of each day in a year. Each day is seen to bode well or ill for certain kinds of enterprises-moving house, travel, marriage, funerals, and so on. Popular almanacs prominently list "dos and don'ts" for each day.
Why do Chinese believe so deeply in the importance of zeri?
Lu, taking the common sense perspective, argues that people by nature are wary of the unknown, and always try to maximize good luck and minimize bad. Thus, so long as the costs are not great, they will always choose to take every precaution for that extra peace of mind. This is what Huang Yi-nung means when he says, "One might as well believe."
What's more, from the perspective of ritual behavior, the solemn zeri process confers sacredness on the event itself. It indicates that this event is formal and is acceptable to the society at large.
"Categorizing time originally was essential. All peoples of the world have done it," explains Lu Li-cheng. In this way, there would not be marriages and funerals going on in the same village on the same day. "But probably only the Chinese have taken this to such a high level of refinement, not only having day selection and time selection, but also determining auspicious or unlucky times according to each individual's Chinese horoscope."
At a deeper level, the core viewpoints underlying such things as zeri and geomancy are that people should conform to the calculus of Heaven, and remain in harmony with the universe (both spatially and temporally).
Li Yih-yuan of the Academia Sinica has written a paper called "Traditional Chinese Cosmology and Modern Business Behavior." In it he notes that at birth each person is assigned a "Celestial Stem" and "Earthly Branch" depending upon the month, year, day, and time of birth. These are the so- called "eight characters." The "eight characters" determine the course of life. This is called "fate." One's fate cannot be altered. However, as each person's life course is matched up with the times of the universe, the interaction of yin and yang and the mutual generation and destruction among the five elements create different opportunities and variables, sometimes good, sometimes bad. This is called "fortune."
"When there is harmony in the correlation between the individual's time and the time in the universe, that is auspicious. When the two are out of harmony, that is inauspicious," says Li Yih-yuan's paper. "That is why Chinese, throughout their lives, try to find the specific points in time which are most advantageous to them. In whatever they do, they try to find the so-called 'auspicious time.'"
Bestseller
This viewpoint was fostered by official orthodoxy. According to a study by Huang Yi-nung, among the responsibilities of the imperial astronomers in Chinese history were not only drawing up the calendar and observing and measuring heavenly bodies, but also geomancy and determination of auspicious times. After the Tang dynasty, with the development of woodblock printing, the central government began publishing almanacs full of "dos and don'ts."
There was a huge demand among the people for these almanacs. Huang Yi-nung has discovered, for example, that in 1329, the first year of the Tianli reign of the Yuan dynasty, more than three million almanacs printed by the government were purchased. In those days, that would have certainly put the almanac at the top of the world bestseller list.
However, it was often impossible for more distant locales, like Fujian and Guangdong, to receive the official almanac in a timely fashion. Attracted by economic incentives, local practitioners of the occult began privately publishing their own books; these included much additional material on the rules for occult calculations. These privately published books are called tong shu (or "popular almanacs"), to distinguish them from the official almanacs.
Lu Li-cheng states: "The original intent behind producing works on the ways to draw up calendars was to fix the principles for recording time for use as reference for farmers in deciding when to plant and when to rest. After the thought of the Yi Jing [Book of Changes] was integrated into it, the logic of the interaction of yin and yang and of the 'five elements,' with their character of 'mutual generation and mutual destruction,' was applied to time. The result was that each day in the year became characterized as auspicious or as taboo for certain types of activities. Over the years, many practitioners have added to and revised the system, so that it has developed into a highly arcane system of occult calculation."
It's interesting that when Western missionaries came to China, to adapt to local customs they produced a Christian almanac, sending a new version out to believers each year. However, because of the doctrine of combating what they called "superstition," they did not include the parts about lucky or unlucky times.
"Naturally that kind of almanac didn't attract many people, so at the end of the Christian almanac a lot of new scientific knowledge was included, to appeal to intellectuals," says Huang, citing as examples the structure of the eyeball or of submersibles, as well as the harmful effects of opium and ways to quit.
In search of Taiwan tong shu
About 400 years ago people began coming over to Taiwan from Fujian and Guangdong in search of land to farm. Faced with the perilous sea voyage and the hazardous life of pioneers, they naturally had a strong need for some authoritative guidance in determining the best (and worst) times to act.
Huang Yi-nung, who saw some Qing-dynasty popular almanacs when he was an exchange scholar at Leiden University in the Netherlands, has studied the roughly 90 different tong shu currently in use in Taiwan. He has discovered that more than two-thirds can be traced back, directly or indirectly, to those produced by the "Jicheng Hall" of Quanzhou in Fujian Province.
In search of the roots of popular almanacs in Taiwan, Huang traveled to mainland China, and in particular to Quanzhou, where he sought out descendants of Hong Chaohe, the man who founded the Jicheng Hall. He wore out his shoes searching in vain until one day he went into the local Maritime History Museum. Completely unexpectedly, there he found the front door of Hong Chaohe's "Zeri Studio," which had been restored in the museum as a historic artifact. Delighted beyond his wildest hopes, he asked around at the museum and discovered that there was still a Hong family descendant through the male primogeniture line-Hong Yongqing. Upon visiting Hong Yongqing, Huang finally found the "lineage" of Taiwan's popular almanacs.
In the second year of the Jiaqing reign period (1796-1821) of the Qing, Hong Chaohe began publishing his Popular Almanac for Bringing Out [Auspiciousness] and Avoiding [Misfortune]. The almanac showed outstanding calculating capability, being comparable to the official version, published shortly after Hong's, in defining the traditional 24 "solar periods" (climatic stages of the year). Hong's work was very well-received.
Its spread was further helped by the entrepreneurial acumen of Hong's descendants. For example, when China began issuing stamps beginning in the Guangxu reign period (1875-1908), the Hong family quickly made their almanacs available by mail order. Also noteworthy is the fact that they produced a list of "recognized graduates of our training," confirming that certain students were certified as having learned their zeri skills from Jicheng Hall. Says Huang with amazement, "It was just like a modern franchising operation, greatly expanding the influence of the Jicheng Hall almanacs."
According to Hong Yongqing, who is now at a very advanced age, not only were the books of the Jicheng Hall popular all along China's southeast coast, they even sold overseas. Every year after Tomb Sweeping Festival, they had to hire 60 or 70 carvers to begin preparing printing blocks for the issue for the forthcoming year.
An established brand name
The Taiwan market was mainly opened up by Hong Tangyan, descended from Hong Chaohe's third son. During the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, popular almanacs were banned, but some were still smuggled in. When Taiwan was returned to Chinese rule, the Hongs immediately dispatched a specially hired boat to deliver 3000 tong shu to Taiwan.
Professor Huang says that in the past, zeri studios ordinarily didn't have names. But some used the Hong Chaohe name; it was like a guarantee of quality. Besides accepting students for personal instruction, Hong Tangyan also produced a twelve issue set called Lectures on the Selection of Days, launching a correspondence course.
However, after the separation of Taiwan from the mainland, and the complete ban on printing tong shu that the PRC imposed in the Cultural Revolution, the Hong tradition has not been carried on in either the mainland or in Taiwan.
"The parent company went under, and its organization was left without its head. With everybody aiming for a piece of the action, various lesser brands began to appear," says Huang, calling that the "Warring States Period" of popular almanacs. He says that besides drawing on Hong's tong shu, the new almanacs included, say, the most auspicious days to travel abroad in one, and mnemonic devices to remember geomancy rules in the other. "All you had to do was sell a few thousand copies, and you could have earned well over a million NT dollars."
From another angle, with so many zeri studios in Taiwan, those that produced a popular almanac have come to be seen as being more authoritative.
"The older the vintage of the tong shu, the better it sells," relates Mrs. Lin, who runs the Chulin Bookshop, where you can buy more than a dozen different popular almanacs. For example, the Lu Fengyuan Tong Shu, which sells 40-50,000 copies per year, has 70 years of history behind it. The You Huafang Tong Shu has been around for 30 years, while those of Lin Hsien-chih and Tsai Ping-chun go back two decades or so.
She suggests that "people trust the old names because the material in them has been passed along in secret from previous generations, so they are less likely to be wrong than ones produced by somebody who has just taken an evening course in almanac calculating." Mrs. Lin emphasizes that getting the wrong wedding day can ruin a marriage for one's whole life, while choosing an inauspicious day to entomb a deceased family member will harm the entire clan, even future generations. So prudence is essential in choosing an almanac.
Half a leaf is better than none
Though the Hong Chaohe tong shu empire collapsed over 40 years ago, surprisingly, for popular almanacs to sell well, it still is essential to stress that they have some connection back to Hong Chaohe.
Mrs. Lin reveals that the author of the best-selling tong shu, Lu Fengyuan was not part of the Hong Chaohe school. But because back in the Qing dynasty the Hong family dominated the Taiwan popular almanac field, Lu took the advice of his publisher and printed "Based on Hong Chaohe" on the back cover.
Kao Ming-te, a sixth-generation student in the Hong school, who emphasizes that he is grandson on his mother's side to Luo Chuanlie of Guangdong (who authored his own popular almanac), says frankly that the main reason he sought out instruction from fifth-generation Hong school student Lin Hsien-chih was for marketing reasons. Privately, he still feels that Luo was more skilled.
He also relates the following legend: Hong and Luo participated in a national examination. The test was to determine how many leaves a particular tree would lose at a particular time. Hong said two, while Luo said one-and-a-half. Oddly enough, in the end the tree lost one healthy leaf, and one half-torn leaf.
"The two of them had different styles. Hong was into widespread promotion, while Luo was more conservative. That's the only reason the situation is the way it is today," says Kao, having his day in court on behalf of his ancestor.
Hong's influence in Taiwan is greater than it is in mainland China. "Most of the tong shu in Taiwan can be traced back to the third son of Hong Chaohe. After travel and exchanges were permitted between Taiwan and the PRC in 1989, some almanac writers went back to the mainland to find the direct first-born male descendant to formally become accepted as a disciple. In the home of Hong Yongqing in Fujian, Huang saw a disciple's oath taken by Tsai Ping-chun of Nantou County in Taiwan.
Tsai recently passed away, and his son and successor Tsai Yao-ching says that his father became a "disciple" to the Hong line mainly to get materials, and see what is different there from Taiwan. But one might also become a Hong "disciple" because most publishers still prefer that their books and authors can claim some connection to the Hong family through the direct line of first-born sons. This lends them a little more cachet than the run-of-the-mill popular almanac.
Who reads popular almanacs?
Tong shu publishers do everything they can think of to get a share of the market. According to unofficial statistics, sales of popular almanacs reach 100-150,000 per year. At a price of NT$500 per book, that's an NT$60-70 million market.
Book shops in any rural town or village in Taiwan always have a special display for tong shu and other almanacs near the entrance. Kao Ming-te reveals that the main consumers are small private temples, Buddhist temples, fortune tellers, and zeri practitioners. "Popular almanacs are essential references for those in the field. Without these books, they couldn't do their job," he says.
Most people use lunar calendars or home-use almanacs, but those who make a true study out of the occult seek a higher level still-the ancient texts.
Fu Yu-kung, a director of the ROC Taoist Studies Association, notes that the popular almanacs are convenient to read, and easily portable. They make good references for on-the-spot checking. But, if you have the time, it is still best to consult the orthodox imperial almanacs.
"The Xieji Bianfang Almanac was produced by imperial scholars at the express command of the Qianlong Emperor. He wanted it to combine the theories of various schools and eliminate a number of baseless superstitions. The emperor himself used it, so you know it must be accurate," argues Fu Yu-kung.
Popular almanacs are suspect, say experts, because they combine different zeri techniques. "Each technique for 'day selection' has its own rules, and inevitably in combining them there are oversights," says Lin. Many of the tong shu have continued to use "baseless superstitions" excised from the official almanacs. Moreover, the original writers of popular almanacs are long dead, and any mistakes in the layout and printing process can trigger a string of errors, but their successors have virtually no ability to recognize the mistakes and also lack the ability to correct them.
Almanacs, or al-money-acs?
Despite these problems with the practice of zeri, people about to enter the 21st century not only deeply believe in it, some have gone to even greater extremes than in the past.
Li Yih-yuan has discovered that the logic of the almanacs-to seek safety through knowing when to act and when not to-has, in modern commercial society, been transformed. It has been adapted to daily life, especially to the pragmatic pursuit of profit.
For example, not only do enterprises seek auspicious times to begin work on something or to break new ground, but people playing the stock market also seek to coordinate their actions with the almanac. The mysterious calculating games they play have become a whole field of occult learning in Taiwan: "commercial fortune telling."
Kao Ming-te does not hesitate to say that the best time for sales of tong shu was back in the heyday of the big-money illegal lotteries. Annual sales exceeded 200,000 copies.
But Taiwan is not alone in this respect. Huang Yi-nung states that in Hong Kong, where Western influence arrived much earlier than in Taiwan, there are even more popular almanacs than in Taiwan. It's just that Hong Kong people have a different name for them. Fearing the fact that the shu in tong shu is a homophone for "to lose," they call them tong sheng (sheng meaning "to win") instead.
"After the mainland began economic reform, the custom of 'day selection' began to experience a renaissance there," says Huang. In just the two or three hours he was at the home of Hong Yongqing-who has not formally hung out his shingle as a tong shu expert-two people came to the house for zeri consultations. Hong charged them RMB1000 each, which is roughly the monthly salary of a professor at Beijing University.
Inescapable frame
Some say there is no harm in "playing it safe" by following the advice of the almanacs. Besides the amount you pay for a consultation, are there really no other costs associated with the custom of zeri?
When the father of Tsai Ming-te, who works in the civil service, passed away, he was just then on an official trip abroad. Upon getting the bad news, he immediately cut short his trip to hurry home for the funeral. Little did Tsai expect that his family's sincerely-sought consultation with a zeri studio would keep him and the family's only grandson, both born in the year of the Boar, out of the service. It turned out that the date of the funeral was said to be not suitable for attendance by anyone born under their sign. Watched by the whole family, he was not even given one last opportunity to see his father's face before the coffin was sealed!
Even though the great historian Sima Qian was already criticizing the custom of zeri as long as 1000 years ago for doing nothing but "restraining people and making them fearful," Chinese people have never gotten away from this structure which frames their lives.
According to research by Huang Yi-nung, when the ministers of the Qing dynasty were about to send their reports off to the emperor, they would always first check the almanac. If they came across the warning, "Not a good day to deliver a report," there wouldn't be a single document dispatched that day. It got to the point where the Jiaqing emperor had to declare: "On unlucky days there are no reports at all, but on lucky days the reports from every ministry come all at once. Every time I get a lot of reports, I check the almanac and it is always an 'auspicious day.' This is absurd! So I am ordering all ministries to send in their reports right away, regardless of the day."
Even an emperor is no match for the power of the almanac. Is consulting the almanac to select a day mere superstition? Maybe so, but it's always better not to test the fates.
p.54
There's a "retro" craze, and many people are wearing traditional clothing for weddings. But regardless of whether the garb is ancient or modern, consulting the almanac to choose an auspicious day is essential.
p.56
The process of picking an auspicious time lends solemnity to an occasion.
p.57
The idea that it is better to "play it safe and not tempt fate" means that even high-tech companies consult the almanac to choose a good day for ground-breaking. (photo by Chen Fang)
p.58
Chinese have long emphasized staying in harmony with cosmic forces. Selection of a suitable day is critical for events like funerals (opposite page, photo by Pu Hua-chih), paying respects to ancestors (left), and "drool-stopping" rituals for month-old infants (above).
p.60
The front door of Hong Chaohe's original zeri studio is now a display at the Quanzhou Maritime Museum. (photo by Huang Yi-nung)
p.61
In this almanac produced by Hong Yingniu, a fifth-generation descendant of the Hong line, there is a picture of the director of the zeri studio as well as a stamp, in order to prevent pirating. (photo by Huang Yi-nung)
Hong Yongqing, a direct male descendant of Hong Chaohe. (photo by Huang Yi-nung)
p.62
After restrictions on interactions between Taiwan and mainland China were lifted, some from Taiwan's almanac industry made special trips to be accepted as "disciples" of the Jicheng Hall, conferring legitimacy on them. (photo by Huang Yi-nung)
p.63
Kao Ming-te, who emphasizes that he is a sixth-generation student of the Hong school, has zeri studios in Panchiao, Taoyuan, and Miaoli. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
p.64
Stock players crowded into Chungshan Hall to hear a lecture by Li Heng-li, director of the Taoist Studies Association, in order to get the inside dope on how fortunes will run in the Year of the Tiger.
Everyone wants to know what will happen to them, to welcome good fortune and avoid ill. Even the Bible suggests that the fate of man has already been written by God. Yet, how many "holy books" can we really understand?
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