Chinese Fortune Teller

G.L is one of my roommates’ mothers and I interviewed her for some folklore she has encountered or experienced.  She is Taiwanese and was born and raised in Taiwan, but she moved to California to raise her children. She thinks that it’s more beneficial to have her children study in the State but also having experience their ethnic culture. Having lived in two countries for a long period time, she had experienced two big cultural aspects of the world, so she would have a decent idea of how the Chinese and Western culture works.

G.L told me that she had an experience with a Chinese Fortune Teller and that she would always trust in them and used what the Fortune Teller said on her children. They would go to the Chinese Fortune Teller and she would tell them how their life was going to turn out. G.L explained that she would actually get a paper from the Fortune Teller and on the paper would be statistics and connections between colors and locations. For example, G.L told me that run, while she and her husband were reading the Fortune Teller Paper for one of her sons, the paper match out so that his lucky colors were green and purple, and that he shouldn’t stay around a mountain area when driving. G.L would try to get her kids to act upon the fortune telling paper, but they wouldn’t force them upon it. In addition, G.L said that her kids weren’t stupid. They won’t purposely drive near a mountain just because I told them its back luck to do so.

G.L started to do this because her mother would also always do this to her. She wasn’t too interested when she was young, but as she grew older she started to participate more in these types of things. She does these because she also thinks it’s very interesting and fun to do. G.L said that it’s interesting to see that it might actually work according to the fortune teller paper.

The fortune teller and the fortune teller paper play a big part in the tradition. The fortune teller and her paper can possible tell how someone’s life will play out, but according to G.L, it’s quite uncommon that the paper would actually be telling the truth.

I personally don’t believe in this kind of stuff, and like G.L said, it’s uncommon for anything to actually happen. For G.L listening to the fortune teller would be her tradition, but the fortune telling aspect would be myth. It’s dealing form the outside world to have something happen to us, or it could be just luck.