Fortunes in the stars
Something interesting about the current fortune-telling craze is the fact that the media has helped to create numerous "psychic stars."
Psychic guests on such popular television programs as Lucky Strike and Fun with Fortune Telling frequently become sizzling celebrities. They print the names of the shows on which they have appeared on their business cards as a means to promote themselves. Jumping on the bandwagon, mobile phone and Internet companies are offering celebrity seer services. Far Eastern Telecom's I-style "515 Psychic Service," for instance, offers fortunes for romance, career, and wealth, as well as dress recommendations for improving your luck transmitted via short messaging at NT$20 a pop. Taiwan Cellular provides recordings by Tang Li-chi's Tarot Readings, Vivian's Astrology, and Hsu Shao-Hua's Naming for Fortune to their mobile-phone customers.
Pay psychic services on larger portal sites and psychic websites with "real human services" are catching the fortune telling wave. Boasting its own batch of celebrities, Live3p.com, founded last April, has organized large minglixue exhibitions held in conjunction with major department stores.
Live3p.com president Wu Yung-yu points out that at first, they require that their gurus be skilled in a variety of fortune-telling methods, including not only traditional Chinese arts like the four pillars of destiny and naming, but also Western astrology. However, the market still shows a preference for traditional Chinese forms. Interestingly enough, since the advent of the Internet has made the idea of space a moot point, one-third of their clientele is located abroad. Moreover, Hong Kong's psychic websites are popular with Taiwan's Internet users.
"Our figures show that females make up two-thirds of the visitors to psychic sites," says Wu. "Concentrated between 25 and 30 years of age, their questions deal mainly with romance, because, we assume, they feel pressure to get married." Wu explains that for most people, love is the most difficult thing in life to get a handle on and the most likely to cause distress, so their company asks their psychics to provide more positive guidance.
The policy of "real human psychics" is the key to Live3p.com's success, but it also limits company growth. Profits are lower because flesh-and-blood soothsayers can only handle so many cases. Computers, on the other hand, are fast and the NT$100-per-consultation price tag is inexpensive enough that users won't shy away from them, so major websites are working hard to develop more accurate fortune-telling software as a small profit, large volume sales strategy.
Showing students the door
Divination by the eight trigrams costs between NT$300 and NT$800 a session, and ziwei astrology goes for between one and several thousand New Taiwan dollars. Name changing is even more expensive. Wu Tsung-tai, who works in high tech and has studied fortune telling, feels that, "Instead of paying somebody big bucks to tell your fortune, you can study the arts yourself. Not only can you get a peek into the mysteries of fortune telling, if you become good enough, it can be a second vocation. If things work out, you can even start your own business." Many study fortune telling with the same ideas in mind, but after they actually start their studies, they realize that these courses only scratch the surface and that the teachers tend to hold back some of the more important trade secrets. The fine points of minglixue and the teacher's experience are available only to true disciples willing to fork out hundreds of thousands of NT dollars for the privilege.
Lan Ming-ho, who lectures on minglixue at Shihlin Community College, explains that in minglixue, the adherents to the Ziping School are skilled at the quick and easy form of bazi fortune telling, which is good for foreseeing luck, whether good or bad, and is particularly accurate in forecasting wealth. The Ziwei School employs ziwei doushu, the study of shifts in the constellations, and although not as good at predicting wealth, it is excellent for auguring romance and disasters. Members of the Jianghu School, who focus on body language and what the client says, offer suggestions based the auras they exude.
Lan explains that to excel at fortune telling, you have to learn under many masters and blend the fortes of their various schools. Their combined tuitions, however, could amount to millions of NT dollars. As most people are only interested in dabbling, it just does not make economic sense to pay six-digit figures just to be accepted by a teacher. As an alternative, community colleges around Taiwan are now offering fine beginning and intermediate level courses in various forms of minglixue.
A Chinese proverb says: Teachers can only show students the door; students have to open it. If you are interested and willing to put time into your studies, there is no need for high-budget courses; many students at inexpensive community college have become "masters" in their own right after only one or two years of study.
The students beginning minglixue class at Shihlin Community College this semester come from all walks of life and average around 40 and 50 years of age. The students, the most conspicuous being a mother and son duo, are merely seeking a path to peace in their lives.
Rely on yourself for success
Cheng Tung-you, a fourth-year student in Fu Jen University's Economics Department, comes to class with his mother so that after class he can explain things she does not understand. He says that the teacher is very interesting. He adds that when they get home, he helps his mother rearrange the house in accordance with the principles proffered by the prof and this has helped mother and son grow closer.
"The problem is, it doesn't seem to work all that well. I still did poorly on my midterms even after adjusting the fengshui in our house." After thinking about it for a moment, Cheng points out that maybe he simply does not know enough yet. After ten classes, he feels that fortune telling and fengshui might be useful on a personal level, but as a student of economics, he does not feel that minglixue can be used to do things like predict the stock market.
His mother, who does not concern herself so much with scientific method, says that understanding minglixue has helped her relieve stress and has served as a sort of psychiatric therapy. When things go wrong, she can step back and try to determine the source of the problem: Did she not put enough effort into the task or was it simply bad luck? "You could say that it gives you a positive philosophy on life." She points out that her son is quite gifted in minglixue and she would not at all be against it if, in the future, he decided to make a career of it.
Times are changing. Fortune telling, considered vulgar in the past, has become very fashionable. But Lan Ming-ho exhorts novices that hard work is still the most important factor to success. This holds true in fortune telling as it does in any line of work.