my fortune telling experience

Last year, during my Shanghai trip, my friend Lillian (a down-home Shanghainese girl) joked to me about seeing a fortune teller. A week later, we were on our way to an appointment. An hour of taxi ride took us to the outer skirts of Shanghai, where all the amazing skyscrapers were out of sight. We walked up this 5-story, stony apartment building, and arrived at a dark hallway. Remember when Keanu Reeves went to the “Oracle” in The Matrix? That dark hallway produced the same eerie feeling to us!

A middle-aged woman guided us into the living room, where a blind man sat (the fortune teller) and his blind wife slept on the bed. After collecting our money and calculating our yin birth date (moon calendar), he began to analyze our past, present and future.

Lillian went first. As the blind man talked his way through her life, I looked around the smoke-filled room and took notice of all the old furnishing, photos, an outdated television set – a bit of an insight to the man who “knows” my future. Then, after the sleeping blind woman farted numerous times, it was my turn.

What he said of my life was pretty vague: I was to go to a foreign place to prosper (I’m from St. Louis, and he must have noticed my foreign tongue). I must study hard to become successful (duh!?!). I must take care of my parents when they get older (of course I will!). Of the rest of my fortune he told, I went along with it. Afterwards, he slipped me a business card, which I left on the floor and thought: I just lost 50 RMB!

But as I gathered my purse to leave, he spoke to me again and said, “I’m sorry you didn’t come to me a few years ago. . . then I would have told you to be careful. . . and you wouldn’t have bled so much. . . you have had problems with your reproductive organs, correct?” Right after that, I picked up his card from the floor and it’s been residing in my wallet ever since.

In Shanghai, there are quite a few must-see places, like Nan Jing Road and the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. They are places any common tourist would go. If you do visit Shanghai, wouldn’t you have a review of those touristy spots for yourself? So instead of writing about that, I’ve decided to share the uncommon Shanghai experiences with you, one of them being this dark yet intriguing fortune telling story.

And by the way, 3 years ago I did have problems with my reproductive organs: I had a fibroid tumor in my uterus. It was removed by an operation and it was benign. But because I was careless about my health back then and refused to visit a gyno, it grew into the size of a baseball, I bled so much that I was hospitalized for a week and needed 2 blood transfusions. It was the hardest time in my life, and now that I am healthy I don’t look back. So how did this chain-smoking blind man with puss running out of eyes know about it?

I probably won't ever return to his apartment again. But I'm keeping the card!

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