Essays
Practical writing on Chinese metaphysics, folk practice and craft — written for readers who want the method explained rather than the mystery sold.
Compatibility Is Not About Zodiac Animals
Three assumptions people bring to marriage readings, and what the tradition actually examines.
Damp Old Houses: Five Things to Check Before Anything Else
When the rain will not stop, the order of inspection matters more than the diagnosis.
When Your Graduate Still Hasn't Found a Job
What parents can usefully do in the first six months — and the three mistakes that make it worse.
The Ten Heavenly Stems: A Plain-English Start to BaZi
Before you can read a BaZi chart, you have to recognise its alphabet. This is the first half of it.
Door, Stove, Bed: The Three Basics of Home Feng Shui
Before furniture placement, before ornaments, before any of it — three positions decide how a house is read.
Choosing a Wedding Date: What Is Actually Being Checked
Date selection is not a lottery. It is a shortlist process, and most of the work is elimination.
Dayun and Liunian: How Traditional Chinese Timing Actually Works
A chart tells you the terrain. The luck cycles tell you when you are walking uphill.
Ancestral Sites in the Hunan Hills: How a Landscape Is Read
Grave siting is one of the oldest applied skills in Chinese geomancy. It is also the one most constrained by law and ecology today.
Four Generations, One Craft: The Fushi Woodcarving Story
A provincial-level heritage craft from the southern slopes of the Xuefeng Mountains — and the family that kept it in use.
The Meishan Altar: Inside a Living Folk Tradition in Southern China
Not a temple, not a sect — a household ritual house with its own pantheon, its own rules, and a lineage that runs back to the Republic.