求籤 · qiú qiān · requesting the slip

Kau Cim

The dominant temple oracle of Taoist and folk Chinese practice, kept at shrines like Wong Tai Sin and the halls of Guan Yin. The petitioner kneels, holds one clear question in mind, and shakes a bamboo cylinder of one hundred numbered slips until a single stick tilts past the rim and falls. Its number is then put to the crescent moon blocks, the jiaobei, which answer yes, ask again, or turn the slip away. We follow the whole rite, with original verses written in the house voice rather than any one temple's poems, and the grades skewed toward the middle as the old sets are. Read it as quiet reflection, the way the temple interpreter would, not as a verdict set in stone.