"Marriage divination involves many factors," Lao Dao began to explain. "The compatibility and conflicts of the zodiac signs, the sixty-year cycle and its associated elements, the Life Palace, the Eight Characters, directional alignment, and so on."
"Time is limited, so I'll teach you the complicated stuff later. Today, we'll start with directional compatibility for marriage."
"Finding someone in the right direction doesn't guarantee they're the right partner for you, as there are many other factors to consider. But it can help you avoid the wrong choices."
"Especially for someone like you." As Lao Dao said this, he gave me a meaningful sidelong glance.
I didn't understand what that look meant.
It wasn't until many years later, after countless events had unfolded, that I truly understood the profound depth of that glance and all the unspoken stories it held. But that's a story for another time.
Right then, all I wanted was to hear how it was calculated and whether it was accurate or not.
The method for determining marital direction uses a palm mnemonic, arranging the twelve zodiac signs on the hand. (See the comments for a diagram.)
Extend your left hand, using your index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers.
Starting from the base of the ring finger, arrange them clockwise: Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai.
Exactly one full circle.
In this palm mnemonic, the directions are also oriented with south at the top and north at the bottom.
Zi, Wu, Mao, and You represent the four cardinal directions: true north, true south, true east, and true west, respectively.
The other positions represent the remaining directions.
You use your lunar birthday, counting the day of the month starting from the position of the birth month.
It's important to note that the lunar months don't start from Zi (the Rat).
Instead, Yin represents the first month.
Going clockwise around the circle, Zi (the Rat) is the eleventh month, and Chou (the Ox) is the twelfth.
For example, someone born on the third day of the third lunar month.
The third month is Chen.
For the third day, you count three positions starting from Chen: Chen, Si, Wu. You land on Wu, which represents true south. This means the north-south axis is a suitable direction for finding a partner.
This was simple enough. I understood it right away and immediately started counting on my fingers.
I wasn't in a hurry to calculate my own, though.
With my engineering mindset, I had to verify its accuracy first.
I went through all the relatives whose birthdays I knew, one by one.
For some, the directions matched. For others, they didn't.
There were also couples where one person's direction matched, but the other's didn't.
"How does that work?" I asked Lao Dao.
He shot me a disdainful glance and said, "This is just a way to avoid the wrong choices. Just look at how the people who chose 'wrong' are living."
I was about to say that they all seemed more or less the same, and were doing just fine.
But Lao Dao cut me off, laying it out for me. "Whether they're doing well or not isn't for you to decide. It's for them to decide.
"For someone with a grand destiny, a hundred million is a small goal.
"For some people, they couldn't make ten million even if their ancestral tombs exploded.
"For an ordinary person, earning thirty million in a year would feel like their ancestors were smiling down on them.
"But for someone with a grand vision, earning *only* thirty million in a year is like losing their shirt."
"In other words, what you see as 'doing just fine' might be an unacceptably miserable existence from the perspective of their own ambitions."
"Outsiders can't necessarily know the scale of a person's ambition, but everyone knows their own."
"For example, that 'small goal' of a hundred million? For that person's level of ambition, it really is a small goal."
"But to most other people, it just sounds like a joke."
"Besides, what you see as 'good' isn't necessarily the reality."
"Qian Zhongshu's wife once said: 'Every family's pot has soot on the bottom. It's not that other people live glamorous lives; it's just that they don't let you see the mess.'"
After saying his piece, Lao Dao put on an air of detached transcendence and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
Thinking it over, he wasn't wrong. That did seem to be how things were.
It was just... this Lao Dao, jumping from talking about losing your shorts to quoting Madame Yang Jiang... I found it a bit hard to stomach.
It felt like pairing green onions with coffee.
What kind of weird taste was this? Was this his idea of appealing to all tastes, both high and low?
Fortunately, I knew my own limits.
When it came to arguing with Lao Dao, I was completely out of my league.
So, I just grinned and said, "You're right, Master."
But in my head, I was thinking, *Right or not, I'll just have to verify it for myself over time.*
I wasn't sure if this counted as officially entering the Daoist path, but I couldn't help feeling I'd gotten the short end of the stick just learning this one little thing.
Still, at least I was someone with a master now.
I shamelessly asked Lao Dao, "Master, it's not like I can go out looking for a partner every day. Could you teach me something a bit more... practical?"
That's what I said out loud, but inside I was anxious, wondering if he'd think I was being greedy.
Proofreader: Peter Pan