Latest news with #fortuneTelling
The Guardian
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Will AI take my job?' A trip to a Beijing fortune-telling bar to see what lies ahead
In the age of self-help, self-improvement and self-obsession, there have never been more places to look to for guidance. Where the anxious and the uncertain might have once consulted a search engine for answers, now we can engage in a seemingly meaningful discussion about our problems with ChatGPT. Or, if you're in China, DeepSeek. To some, though, it feels as if our ancestors knew more about life than we do. Or at least, they knew how to look for them. And so it is that scores of young Chinese are turning to ancient forms of divination to find out what the future holds. In the past couple of years, fortune-telling bars have been popping up in China's cities, offering drinks and snacks alongside xuanxue, or spiritualism. The trend makes sense: China's economy is struggling, and although consumers are saving their pennies, going out for a drink is cheaper than other forms of retail therapy or an actual therapist. With a deep-rooted culture of mysticism that blends Daoist, Buddhist and folk practices, which have defied decades of the government trying to stamp out superstitious beliefs, for many Chinese people, turning to the unseen makes perfect sense. This week, I decided to join them. My xuanxue haunt of choice is Qie Le, a newly opened bar in Beijing's wealthy Chaoyang district. On a Thursday evening, the bar, adorned with yellow Taoist talismans and draped translucent curtains, is quiet. All the better for hogging the fortune-teller's attention with questions from my deep wells of narcissism. But Wan Mo, either because of her spiritual intuition or because I am not the first self-involved millennial to seek her services, sees me coming a mile off. It's strictly one question per drink bought. Wan Mo, a stylish 36-year-old dressed in a loose white Tang-style jacket fastened with traditional Chinese knots, specialises in qiuqian, or Chinese lottery sticks. The practice involves shaking a cylindrical wooden container full of wooden sticks, while focusing on a question in your mind. Eventually, one of the sticks, engraved with text and numerals, falls out, and a fortune-teller can interpret the answer. Qiuqian dates back to the Jin dynasty (AD266 to AD420) and has survived centuries of war, upheaval, a Cultural Revolution and the rise of artificial intelligence to remain a stalwart of Taoist temples, and now, Beijing cocktail bars. So I'm hoping that qiuqian will be well placed to answer my first question: Will AI take my job? 'Use both hands,' Wan Mo says firmly. She is a no-nonsense savant. 'Focus on your question.' She tells me that as a foreigner, my connection with the sticks might not be as profound as a Chinese person's. So I need to 'think carefully'. After a few seconds of focused yet vigorous shaking, not one but two sticks drop on to the table between us. Wan Mo studies the first one. 'This stick means that later on, AI will have an impact on your job … even though you're very talented, you can't compete with its scale. For example, if you write one article, it can write 10. It will definitely affect you.' This is not the spiritual salve I was hoping for. Wan Mo tells me that the second stick even provides a timeline for my professional redundancy. 'It says that within one to three years, there won't be a major impact. But after three years, AI will become a major force.' Wan Mo's predictions don't leave me full of hope for my next question. But in the spirit of xuanxue, I decide to try my luck again, and order another round. We take a brief break for Wan Mo to have a cigarette break and catch up with a friend who has wandered into the bar. His chipper demeanour makes me think that he is yet to discover that AI will take his job – or he's just made his peace with it. Eventually I muster up enough liquid courage to ask my second question. Wan Mo's stern demeanour sends a slight chill through my hands as I grasp the qiuqian box for the second time. Shake, shake, shake. Think, think, think. A single wooden stick falls out of the container. 'Will I get a pay rise?' I ask, tentatively. The answer comes unnervingly quickly. 'There's not much possibility at the moment. Although [the stick] is about transition … it shows there is no major change … There is some hope, but it's not immediate. You need to make some personal adjustments.' I ask what kind of personal adjustments I could make, hoping that she won't make me order another drink to find out. 'If you want a pay rise, xuanxue can only offer support,' she demurs. 'For example, the bracelet I'm wearing is for attracting wealth. It's made from natural materials … we'd recommend wearing something like this. It can help bring in some financial luck and may have a positive effect. But the most important thing is still communicating with the superiors.' I am not sure if she means my spiritual or editorial superiors. But with that my time is up. Wan Mo's friend says that everyone comes to Qie Le with the same kinds of questions: how to get rich, stay healthy, find love. I feel as if all I've discovered is how dim my chances are on the first question, and it's getting too late to ask the second and third. I slink off home to get some sleep before my early start the next day. I bet AI doesn't have to worry about feeling tired. Additional research by Lillian Yang
The Guardian
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Will AI take my job?' A trip to a Beijng fortune-telling bar to see what lies ahead
In the age of self-help, self-improvement and self-obsession, there have never been more places to look to for guidance. Where the anxious and the uncertain might have once consulted a search engine for answers, now we can engage in a seemingly meaningful discussion about our problems with ChatGPT. Or, if you're in China, DeepSeek. To some, though, it feels as if our ancestors knew more about life than we do. Or at least, they knew how to look for them. And so it is that scores of young Chinese are turning to ancient forms of divination to find out what the future holds. In the past couple of years, fortune-telling bars have been popping up in China's cities, offering drinks and snacks alongside xuanxue, or spiritualism. The trend makes sense: China's economy is struggling, and although consumers are saving their pennies, going out for a drink is cheaper than other forms of retail therapy or an actual therapist. With a deep-rooted culture of mysticism that blends Daoist, Buddhist and folk practices, which have defied decades of the government trying to stamp out superstitious beliefs, for many Chinese people, turning to the unseen makes perfect sense. This week, I decided to join them. My xuanxue haunt of choice is Qie Le, a newly opened bar in Beijing's wealthy Chaoyang district. On a Thursday evening, the bar, adorned with yellow Taoist talismans and draped translucent curtains, is quiet. All the better for hogging the fortune-teller's attention with questions from my deep wells of narcissism. But Wan Mo, either because of her spiritual intuition or because I am not the first self-involved millennial to seek her services, sees me coming a mile off. It's strictly one question per drink bought. Wan Mo, a stylish 36-year-old dressed in a loose white Tang-style jacket fastened with traditional Chinese knots, specialises in qiuqian, or Chinese lottery sticks. The practice involves shaking a cylindrical wooden container full of wooden sticks, while focusing on a question in your mind. Eventually, one of the sticks, engraved with text and numerals, falls out, and a fortune-teller can interpret the answer. Qiuqian dates back to the Jin dynasty (AD266 to AD420) and has survived centuries of war, upheaval, a Cultural Revolution and the rise of artificial intelligence to remain a stalwart of Taoist temples, and now, Beijing cocktail bars. So I'm hoping that qiuqian will be well placed to answer my first question: Will AI take my job? 'Use both hands,' Wan Mo says firmly. She is a no-nonsense savant. 'Focus on your question.' She tells me that as a foreigner, my connection with the sticks might not be as profound as a Chinese person's. So I need to 'think carefully'. After a few seconds of focused yet vigorous shaking, not one but two sticks drop on to the table between us. Wan Mo studies the first one. 'This stick means that later on, AI will have an impact on your job … even though you're very talented, you can't compete with its scale. For example, if you write one article, it can write 10. It will definitely affect you.' This is not the spiritual salve I was hoping for. Wan Mo tells me that the second stick even provides a timeline for my professional redundancy. 'It says that within one to three years, there won't be a major impact. But after three years, AI will become a major force.' Wan Mo's predictions don't leave me full of hope for my next question. But in the spirit of xuanxue, I decide to try my luck again, and order another round. We take a brief break for Wan Mo to have a cigarette break and catch up with a friend who has wandered into the bar. His chipper demeanour makes me think that he is yet to discover that AI will take his job – or he's just made his peace with it. Eventually I muster up enough liquid courage to ask my second question. Wan Mo's stern demeanour sends a slight chill through my hands as I grasp the qiuqian box for the second time. Shake, shake, shake. Think, think, think. A single wooden stick falls out of the container. 'Will I get a pay rise?' I ask, tentatively. The answer comes unnervingly quickly. 'There's not much possibility at the moment. Although [the stick] is about transition … it shows there is no major change … There is some hope, but it's not immediate. You need to make some personal adjustments.' I ask what kind of personal adjustments I could make, hoping that she won't make me order another drink to find out. 'If you want a pay rise, xuanxue can only offer support,' she demurs. 'For example, the bracelet I'm wearing is for attracting wealth. It's made from natural materials … we'd recommend wearing something like this. It can help bring in some financial luck and may have a positive effect. But the most important thing is still communicating with the superiors.' I am not sure if she means my spiritual or editorial superiors. But with that my time is up. Wan Mo's friend says that everyone comes to Qie Le with the same kinds of questions: how to get rich, stay healthy, find love. I feel as if all I've discovered is how dim my chances are on the first question, and it's getting too late to ask the second and third. I slink off home to get some sleep before my early start the next day. I bet AI doesn't have to worry about feeling tired. Additional research by Lillian Yang
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The spiritual economy: young Chinese turn to fortune tellers as anxiety about the future rises
Pass my exams. Meet Mr Right. Get rich. Pinned to a board by the entrance of a dimly lit fortune telling bar in Fengtai, an urban district in the south of Beijing, handwritten notes reveal the inner worries of customers coming for cocktails with a side of spiritual salvation. One As All is one of several fortune telling bars to have opened in Beijing, Shanghai and other Chinese cities in recent years. Hidden on the 12th floor of a commercial building, the bar serves a wide range of drinks starting at an auspicious 88 yuan (£9) (eight is considered to be lucky number in China). As well as enjoying a sundowner with a view over Beijing's skyline, customers can consult the in-house fortune teller who specialises in qiuqian, known in English as Chinese lottery sticks, an ancient style of divination often found in Taoist temples. From a private side-room, the smell of incense burning in front of a genuine Taoist shrine wafts into the bar. Derrex Deng, a 20-year-old student-cum-savant interprets the lottery sticks for customers. Adorned with jade jewellery, his nails manicured with sparkly black and white cats, Deng is a decidedly Gen Z fortune teller. He first felt a mystical calling when he was three or four years old and started seeing spirits, he says. 'Everybody trusted me, because I was so correct in telling them the truth in a direct way'. To divine the future with qiuqian, customers pose a question before pulling a flat wooden stick from an intricately carved cylinder. Each stick is engraved with numerals and texts, which Deng interprets. His divination skills are as Gen Z as his fashion sense. Interpreting a stick drawn in response to a question about how to improve communications with an overseas relative, he suggests using more emojis in text messages. Worries about relationships and jobs are hardly unique to China. But as the country grapples with slowing economic growth, many young people are feeling particularly anxious about the future. So some are turning to xuanxue, or mysticism. Cece, an astrology app backed by Tencent, has been downloaded more than 100m times. The trend has been dubbed the 'spiritual economy'. 'The most obvious sign of economic downturn is that, a few years ago, it felt like hardly anyone believed in metaphysics or fortune telling. But in the past two years, such beliefs have clearly become more common,' wrote one Weibo user. 'Drinking and so-called mysticism have something in common, especially in the current environment, when everyone is under a lot of pressure,' says Ma Xu, 33, co-owner of One As All, which opened in April last year. 'They both give people an outlet for their emotions or a way to vent.' As a Taoist believer himself, Ma also wanted to accrue good karma for the afterlife by opening a bar that could lift people's spirits. An economic downturn might seem like an odd time to open a bar. But Ma disagrees. 'Now the economy is going down, people can't buy expensive things, such as travelling abroad. But they can come and drink a glass of wine and chat all night.' Plus, he says, as a Taoist he's not focused on making a lot of money. 'Before we used to go to temples to do qiuqian,' says Dong Boya, 29, who works in public relations. 'But this combination of drawing sticks and having a drink is interesting.' Dong and her friends have come to One As All armed with questions about how to find love and get rich. Neither is easy in Beijing, they say. 'The way to make money fast is by breaking the law. The best ways are already written in the criminal law. Or you need to know someone,' jokes Hu Jiahui, 30, who works in artificial intelligence. Qiuqian is one of several types of Chinese fortune telling to be enjoying a resurgence among young city-dwellers. While there is some interest in western-style divination such as tarot, it lacks the cultural resonance of Chinese traditions. 'Tarot comes from overseas, so I treat it with some suspicion,' says Ning Ning, 37. She prefers Taoist or Buddhist fortune telling. Yaling Jiang, a consumer trends analyst, says the interest in Chinese-style fortune telling can be connected to a rising sense of cultural confidence. In recent months, several Chinese brands or products have gone global, from Labubus to DeepSeek. Ne Zha 2, an animated film based on ancient mythology, broke worldwide records for its takings in the Chinese box office 'The young audience is starting to connect to traditional Chinese culture,' says Jiang. But mysticism occupies a sensitive place in Chinese society. The Communist party is officially atheist and has repeatedly cracked down on what it describes as superstitious beliefs. Last year, state media reported that nearly 300 people had been 'criminally dealt with' since 2018 for activities relating to spiritualism, with individuals sentenced to up to 17 years in prison. Still, many people maintain individual beliefs in Taoism, Buddhism and other types of spirituality, and praying to deities or ancestors for good luck and guidance is common. Ma, the co-owner of One As All, says that he's careful to stay on the right side of the 'clear red line' of government controls. The bar doesn't charge for qiuqian, and he also reminds customers not to be superstitious. 'There's big a difference between having a belief and being superstitious,' he says. In China's current economic predicament, more corporeal factors may create a space for fortune telling bars. Consumer confidence is at historic lows and the government is desperate to get people spending more, especially as the part of the economy that has traditionally propped up growth, exports, is under pressure from the US-China trade war. Any trend that gets people spending is likely to be welcomed by the authorities says Jiang. 'If the final outcome is that it drives consumption, I don't think it will cause any backlash'. Additional research by Lillian Yang
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The spiritual economy: young Chinese turn to fortune tellers as anxiety about the future rises
Pass my exams. Meet Mr Right. Get rich. Pinned to a board by the entrance of a dimly lit fortune telling bar in Fengtai, an urban district in the south of Beijing, handwritten notes reveal the inner worries of customers coming for cocktails with a side of spiritual salvation. One As All is one of several fortune telling bars to have opened in Beijing, Shanghai and other Chinese cities in recent years. Hidden on the 12th floor of a commercial building, the bar serves a wide range of drinks starting at an auspicious 88 yuan (£9) (eight is considered to be lucky number in China). As well as enjoying a sundowner with a view over Beijing's skyline, customers can consult the in-house fortune teller who specialises in qiuqian, known in English as Chinese lottery sticks, an ancient style of divination often found in Taoist temples. From a private side-room, the smell of incense burning in front of a genuine Taoist shrine wafts into the bar. Derrex Deng, a 20-year-old student-cum-savant interprets the lottery sticks for customers. Adorned with jade jewellery, his nails manicured with sparkly black and white cats, Deng is a decidedly Gen Z fortune teller. He first felt a mystical calling when he was three or four years old and started seeing spirits, he says. 'Everybody trusted me, because I was so correct in telling them the truth in a direct way'. To divine the future with qiuqian, customers pose a question before pulling a flat wooden stick from an intricately carved cylinder. Each stick is engraved with numerals and texts, which Deng interprets. His divination skills are as Gen Z as his fashion sense. Interpreting a stick drawn in response to a question about how to improve communications with an overseas relative, he suggests using more emojis in text messages. Worries about relationships and jobs are hardly unique to China. But as the country grapples with slowing economic growth, many young people are feeling particularly anxious about the future. So some are turning to xuanxue, or mysticism. Cece, an astrology app backed by Tencent, has been downloaded more than 100m times. The trend has been dubbed the 'spiritual economy'. 'The most obvious sign of economic downturn is that, a few years ago, it felt like hardly anyone believed in metaphysics or fortune telling. But in the past two years, such beliefs have clearly become more common,' wrote one Weibo user. 'Drinking and so-called mysticism have something in common, especially in the current environment, when everyone is under a lot of pressure,' says Ma Xu, 33, co-owner of One As All, which opened in April last year. 'They both give people an outlet for their emotions or a way to vent.' As a Taoist believer himself, Ma also wanted to accrue good karma for the afterlife by opening a bar that could lift people's spirits. An economic downturn might seem like an odd time to open a bar. But Ma disagrees. 'Now the economy is going down, people can't buy expensive things, such as travelling abroad. But they can come and drink a glass of wine and chat all night.' Plus, he says, as a Taoist he's not focused on making a lot of money. 'Before we used to go to temples to do qiuqian,' says Dong Boya, 29, who works in public relations. 'But this combination of drawing sticks and having a drink is interesting.' Dong and her friends have come to One As All armed with questions about how to find love and get rich. Neither is easy in Beijing, they say. 'The way to make money fast is by breaking the law. The best ways are already written in the criminal law. Or you need to know someone,' jokes Hu Jiahui, 30, who works in artificial intelligence. Qiuqian is one of several types of Chinese fortune telling to be enjoying a resurgence among young city-dwellers. While there is some interest in western-style divination such as tarot, it lacks the cultural resonance of Chinese traditions. 'Tarot comes from overseas, so I treat it with some suspicion,' says Ning Ning, 37. She prefers Taoist or Buddhist fortune telling. Yaling Jiang, a consumer trends analyst, says the interest in Chinese-style fortune telling can be connected to a rising sense of cultural confidence. In recent months, several Chinese brands or products have gone global, from Labubus to DeepSeek. Ne Zha 2, an animated film based on ancient mythology, broke worldwide records for its takings in the Chinese box office 'The young audience is starting to connect to traditional Chinese culture,' says Jiang. But mysticism occupies a sensitive place in Chinese society. The Communist party is officially atheist and has repeatedly cracked down on what it describes as superstitious beliefs. Last year, state media reported that nearly 300 people had been 'criminally dealt with' since 2018 for activities relating to spiritualism, with individuals sentenced to up to 17 years in prison. Still, many people maintain individual beliefs in Taoism, Buddhism and other types of spirituality, and praying to deities or ancestors for good luck and guidance is common. Ma, the co-owner of One As All, says that he's careful to stay on the right side of the 'clear red line' of government controls. The bar doesn't charge for qiuqian, and he also reminds customers not to be superstitious. 'There's big a difference between having a belief and being superstitious,' he says. In China's current economic predicament, more corporeal factors may create a space for fortune telling bars. Consumer confidence is at historic lows and the government is desperate to get people spending more, especially as the part of the economy that has traditionally propped up growth, exports, is under pressure from the US-China trade war. Any trend that gets people spending is likely to be welcomed by the authorities says Jiang. 'If the final outcome is that it drives consumption, I don't think it will cause any backlash'. Additional research by Lillian Yang
Times
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Why Ireland is turning to tarot card readings on Tiktok
Once confined to crystal shops and niche spiritual circles, tarot reading has found an unexpected revival on TikTok, with some users now offering private online readings for up to €185. The origin of tarot cards traces back to 15th-century northern Italy when they were used as part of a card game called 'trionfi' (triumphs), but they didn't gain popularity in Ireland and the UK as a tool for fortune-telling until the late 1800s. In Ireland, tarot cards have long been considered taboo and overshadowed by Catholic cultural norms, but younger generations have begun to embrace them for wellness and mental health purposes, as well as a shift away from religion. Videos of tarot readings on TikTok have racked up 5.4 billion views, with the hashtags 'Tarot Tok' and 'Irish tarot lady' trending.
