With the Chinese New Year looming before us in a matter of hours, most of us have already checked what’s in store for your Zodiac sign this Year of the Water Snake. Just Googling Chinese horoscopes 2013 brings up 24 million + results, mostly from astrology websites. There’s the special reports from reputable online magazines too, interviewing renowned geomancers and feng shui experts, so you can be sure the predictions have the stamp of authority and authenticity.
The mothers and daughters of Joy Luck Club
In other words, you won’t run out of places to consult your Chinese horoscope for the coming New Year.
I read two recent articles, each featuring a feng shui expert. In the first one, the feng shui expert warned about green, grey, blue, and black as being unlucky colors. In the second article, black, blue, green, bluish-green were supposedly the lucky colors. Maybe one of the two just accidentally mixed it all up. So I consulted a third one, which finally confirmed that 2013’s lucky colors are indeed black, blue, green, bluish-green since they’re the colors of water.
Pig Before, Dog Now
I raise up this issue of confusion because for the longest time I thought I was born in the Year of the Pig. Naturally, all the horoscopes I read and consequently applied to myself with such fervor and hope were those of the Pig. Later on, I learned that the Year of the Pig doesn’t start until February of the year I was born in, thus instantly making me a Dog. So the entire time, I had been appropriating someone else’s Chinese horoscope.
Now don’t get me wrong. I believe in horoscopes, but of course with a bit of caution thrown in. As a matter of fact, I used to write for a website which dealt specifically with astrology reports and horoscopes, including the Chinese Zodiac signs. No, I don’t compose the horoscopes, I just write to promote them to people who want their very own personalized horoscopes. And because you have to believe in what you’re writing about, that job required a major paradigm shift for me, an overhaul of my beliefs, if only temporarily. But then again, I’m no Mulder, I’m a Scully by heart.
I no longer write for that website. But looking back now, I’ve come to realize that horoscopes should not be appreciated for their spot-on accuracy, but for what they can inspire in the people who subscribe to them.
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Chinese Zodiac Signs and Narratives
Whenever the topic of Chinese horoscope comes up, I’m always reminded of Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, which I read in my formative years (my school did not require us to read it, thankfully. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have touched it.)
Lovely intertwined stories Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters, and the cultural and generational gap they all have to bridge. All the characters are memorable, and, admittedly, they themselves attribute their various strengths, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, even their fates to their Chinese Zodiac sign and their elements.
Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 1:
“The elements were from my mother’s own version of organic chemistry. Each person is made of five elements, she told me.
Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always criticized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should keep her thoughts to herself. I think he now feels guilty that he didn’t let my mother speak her mind.
Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people’s ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei.
Too much water and you flowed in too many directions, like myself, for having started half a degree in biology, then half a degree in art, and then finishing neither when I went off to work for a small ad agency as a secretary, later becoming a copywriter.”
Maybe I was just too impressionable when I was young, but Joy Luck Club moved me. This is why I’m more inclined towards Chinese horoscope than astrology in Western perspective. I’ve always read my (Western astrology) horoscope in the same section of the newspaper as the comics and crossword puzzles. Very reassuring, right?
As for the Chinese Zodiac, they have always been tied to a beautiful narrative which I grew up reading. And therein lies the difference.
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Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!
