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I Ching Oracle Guide The I Ching in China today: heritage, fever and a split file

The I Ching in China today: heritage, fever and a split file

During the Cultural Revolution, from 1966, the campaign 破四旧 (po sijiu) was in force: destroy the four olds, old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits. Red Guards especially carried it. It escalated in the summer of 1966, Red August in Beijing, and faded in the course of 1967. Classical works, calligraphy and paintings were seized from private homes and destroyed as feudal heritage. Since 1963 the state had already been preparing the population to combat 封资修: feudalism, capitalism, revisionism.

The I Ching as a book does not appear, in the sources at hand, under a named national ban. What Chinese commentaries describe is that fortune-telling, feng shui and the Zhouyi as a practice were placed in the broader category 封建迷信 (feudal superstition). According to Chinese commentaries that has been the Party's standard term for divination ever since, and it still turns up in official reporting. The distinction between the classic and the practice is the line that follows.

Liu Dajun and the rebuilding in Jinan

In 1984, the year of the first nationwide academic Zhouyi congress after reform and opening, held in Wuhan, Liu Dajun (刘大钧, born 1943 in Zouping, Shandong) set up a 周易研究室 (Zhouyi research room) inside the philosophy faculty at Shandong University (山东大学). In March 1988 it became an independent body, the 山东大学周易研究中心 (Zhouyi Research Center of Shandong University). In September 2000, after recognition as a key humanities base of the Ministry of Education, it took its present name: 易学与中国古代哲学研究中心, Center for Yixue and Chinese Classical Philosophy.

According to the center's own overview it specializes in 象数易学 (xiangshu yixue), the images-and-numbers tradition. It houses the headquarters of the 中国周易学会 (Chinese Zhouyi Association) and the editorial office of Zhouyi Yanjiu. It maintains exchanges with institutions in Germany, Taiwan, Macau and South Korea, and has received visiting scholars from more than thirty countries and regions.

Liu founded the journal 周易研究 (Zhouyi Yanjiu, Studies of the Zhouyi) in 1988, at first with his own funds. It is the only publicly issued specialist journal for Yixue research on the Chinese mainland: a quarterly at first, bimonthly since 2002, named an outstanding journal of Shandong in 1998 and a CSSCI national core humanities journal in 2000. According to the journal's description its sections run from the history of Yixue and philosophy to textual work on the Zhouyi and its commentaries, excavated Yi texts, and Yixue studies abroad, the sort of work that also covers finds such as the Mawangdui silk I Ching.

Besides directing the center and editing Zhouyi Yanjiu, Liu is lifetime honorary chairman of the Chinese Zhouyi Association and a member of the 中央文史研究馆 (Central Research Institute of Culture and History).

In late 1987 Jinan hosted the first, and until then the largest, international Zhouyi congress on Chinese soil. That meeting is treated as the start of the unprecedented flourishing of Yixue research. The Chinese Zhouyi Association was formally registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs in November 1996 as a national first-grade association, with Shandong University as its seat. On 23 April 2004, at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, the 国际易学联合会 (International Confederation of Yi Studies) was founded, under the supervision of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

In his survey of twentieth-century Yixue, Liu himself marks four phases: a transitional period (1900s-1940s) under Western methods and the Gushibian school; a brief flourishing under Marxist dialectical materialism (1949 to the early 1960s); stagnation during the Cultural Revolution (mid-1960s to 1977); and recovery plus unprecedented flourishing from 1978. That is his periodization, not an independent census.

The two sides of the Zhouyi fever

In the mid-1980s, in the wake of the culture fever of the 1980s, a reflection on the economic decline and the cultural destruction of the Cultural Revolution, a specific 周易热 (Zhouyi fever) took hold. Liu Dajun calls that fever a problem in two respects. A 算卦热 (fortune-teller fever): using the book flatly as a divinatory tool. And a 科学易热 (scientific-Yijing fever): forced comparisons with modern natural science, for instance with the genetic code or with binary mathematics. Western readers know the second reflex from Leibniz and the binary hexagrams. Liu names it as one of the two problematic sides of the same fever.

In 1984 the Chinese government established the 孔子基金会 (Confucius Foundation), which surveys of the 国学热 (guoxue re, the revival of classical studies) treat as a sign of official support. The Zhouyi fever was part of that revival. From the mid-1990s the wider wave shifted, again according to those surveys, into a second phase, fed by reflection on globalization and by 文化保守主义 (cultural conservatism).

Set Liu's two fevers beside his own center's specialism in xiangshu yixue, and what stands out is that Liu's center aimed at neither the natural-science analogy nor popular fortune-telling, but at its own images-and-numbers tradition. Our reading: that is how Jinan kept the fever inside the walls, not by avoiding number, but by making it a subject of scholarly research.

Heritage above, fortune-telling below

According to a NetEase article on the official list of bachelor majors, there is no separate major called Zhouyi or Yijing. Only a small number of universities offer related courses, usually inside philosophy programmes, with specialist supervision only at master's or doctoral level. Shandong University is, according to Chinese commentaries, the only university with a full, lasting research center specifically for Yixue. According to a page of Peking University's history faculty, Beida offers, through that faculty, a course of intensive reading of the Zhouyi developed by several senior professors, and China University of Political Science and Law offers an introductory course, Introduction to the Zhouyi. One lasting center, a small number of courses, no major: that suggests, we think, a thin teaching column for a book being built up at the same time as heritage.

On 11 April 2019 the Ministry of Education circulated the Regulations on preventing obstruction of compulsory education. Extracurricular training institutions may not, under the banner of 国学 (guoxue), teach 三从四德 (the three obediences and four virtues), 占卜 (divination), feng shui or 算命 (suanming, calculating fate). The text calls this 封建糟粕, feudal dregs. The same language returns in 半月谈 (Banyuetan): cut the industrial chain of feudal dregs in the name of guoxue.

Xinhua reported on 13 April 2023 on fraudulent guoxue trainings that sell fortune-telling and I Ching courses under the cover of traditional culture. A course for I Ching master at 3,986 yuan, a complaint from Taiyuan. A course from Sanming Yeqin Enterprise Management at 2,980 yuan. Feng shui adjustments by Yishang Academy from 20,000 yuan online to 50,000 yuan in person. An instructor who called himself a professor at Beijing Normal University and promised a minimum monthly income of 3,000 yuan from fortune-telling work. Since March 2022 the complaint platform Heimao had logged more than 3,800 complaints about guoxue training. The pattern repeats: false titles, including an invented chairmanship of a World Chinese I Ching and Feng Shui Association. Experts in that article argue for tighter licences, the principle that whoever advertises is responsible, limits on online promotion of fortune-telling, Zhouyi and feng shui, and criminal prosecution in cases of fraud.

According to a piece of 1 May 2022 in 人民论坛 (Renmin Luntan), published on the People's Daily platform, on the origins of fortune-telling culture, that culture deserves a rational understanding. The piece places the Zhouyi in a long history of divinatory culture without labelling the book itself as superstition.

According to Chinese legal commentaries, there is no closed statutory definition of when fortune-telling or feng shui counts as 迷信 (superstition), which makes enforcement hard. The myth that fortune-telling and feng shui are illegal in China therefore does not hold. What is prosecuted is mainly fraud under that cover. The myth that the government banned the I Ching, or wiped it out as state policy, finds no support in the sources consulted. The book itself is not documented under a national ban, and academic research on it has, since 1978, been officially built up.

Set the Shandong center, the CSSCI journal, the CASS confederation and Liu's seat in the Central Research Institute beside the 2019 ministerial text and the Xinhua case file of 2023, and we read a split in it: the official vocabulary for superstition (封建迷信, 封建糟粕) has stayed, but the object has been divided in two. Above the split: philology, heritage, international congresses. Below it: the market in masters, feng shui and monthly income. It follows, we think, that the I Ching survived in the People's Republic by being booked as philosophy, while its popular use kept the old category. Guoxue has official backing and hence prestige, while there is hardly any regular teaching of the Zhouyi; into that gap, we think, the course sellers step.

Temples, young people and the AI fortune-teller

How widespread belief in fortune-telling among Chinese young people actually is has not been measured unambiguously. A scientifically representative percentage is missing. What exists are commercial and journalistic indicators, and two frames that light different sides of the same field.

According to Chinese media, a visitor platform reported that temple tickets ordered in spring 2023 rose 310 percent year on year. People born in the 1990s and 2000s (90后/00后) made up nearly half the visitors. This was widely read as a wave of young people going to temples for spiritual comfort. 澎湃新闻 (The Paper) tied it in May 2023 to interest in 玄学 (xuanxue, mysticism or metaphysics) at large life decisions: health, exams, relationships. The article cites research that fortune-telling can reduce anxiety about uncertainty and, through a placebo effect, raise confidence, including among the highly educated. That is the lifeline frame.

The other frame is that of Xinhua and Banyuetan: large-scale fraud under a guoxue jacket. Both can be sourced. This is not a case of figures against a myth.

In early 2025, after the Chinese AI model DeepSeek launched, many young users on Xiaohongshu and Weibo, according to TMTPost, used the model to have their 八字 (bazi, birth horoscope) read, to predict love matches and to talk through career prospects, training the model into a fortune-teller with detailed prompts. Some users noticed that identical input produced identical predictions. Commercial apps were already there. Quin (AI tarot) charges 98 yuan a week and sat, in early 2024, third in the entertainment category of the Chinese Apple App Store, with more than 50,000 ratings and a score of 4.7 stars. Moonshot AI, known for Kimi, then valued at 33 billion yuan, offered a free Tarot Master function. Chinese state television (CCTV) warned that some of these apps ask for clear face photos, with a risk of biometric data being misused. Legal experts pointed out that the apps have no actual predictive value.

That suggests, we think, that part of the demand is not for a metaphysics but for a procedure against uncertainty. The yarrow-stalk oracle arrives at a result through the body, slowly, with remainders of one to four. The AI fortune-teller returns, some users noticed, the same prediction for the same input. Our reading: what Liu called 算卦热 in the 1980s has a related successor in bazi and tarot apps; about the Zhouyi itself these figures say nothing. Alongside the scholarly debate, conducted in Jinan as much as in the West, China has, as we read it, acquired an administrative question: which use of the book belongs in a journal, and which use ends up on a complaint platform.

Sources

The old ritual Cast the yarrow stalks Ask your question and build your hexagram line by line, with the classical odds.

Further reading

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