The term "metaphysics" has recently become popular on the Internet, and netizens like to summarize wonderful and unique encounters as "metaphysics", expressing their surprise and inconceivability. In fact, the real rise and popularity of metaphysics was in China's Wei and Jin dynasties, and now when it comes to metaphysics, fortune telling is naturally the best thing to do, and to this day, fortune telling, naming and looking at feng shui are the main business of fortune tellers. The village of Xuejiawan in Yongdeng County, Gansu Province, is a legendary "Suan gua village".
Xuejiawan Village is located in Yongdeng County, Gansu Province, with about 170 households. In ancient times, the people in the village did not rely on farming for a living, but relied on fortune-telling skills to walk the rivers and lakes and make a living. This craft has been passed down from generation to generation, and it is resolutely not passed on from father to son, mother-in-law to daughter-in-law, and thus multiply and pass on the craft to this day. The four major families in the village, Liu, Gao, He and Liu, intermarried with each other, and rarely married or married outside.
The Xuejiawan people use the Yongdeng dialect with local characteristics in their daily lives, which is no different from the nearby area, but when it comes to fortune telling, they immediately use a special language - Shao sentence. This language is not passed down in the village, and there are no written reference books, but only passed on by word of mouth. Every year, Xuejiawan Village worships the "God of Joy" and regards him as the grandmaster of the Bu Gua and the supreme deity.
The latrines of every household in the village are located outside the houses, and they are neatly planned and scattered. Outsiders entering the village, if there is no guidance from the locals, they will be confused. It is said that the overall layout of Xuejiawan Village was designed according to the eight arrays drawn by Zhuge Liang, the Shu Han chancellor of the Three Kingdoms period, and the original purpose was naturally to defend against foreign invasion.
People have different views on the history of Xuejiawan Village, and there are many opinions. Some people say that they are descendants of the Miao people and live here to escape the chaos of war; others say that they are the descendants of Zhuge Liang, who migrated from the Shu land of Sichuan and settled here; even more exaggeratedly, some people speculate that they are descendants of the Gypsies, so they are proficient in the art of divination, and in the end, no one has been able to produce strong evidence for the mystery of xuejiawan village.
Later, scientists wanted to explore the truth behind Xuejiawan Village through the "treasure of the town and village" and unveil the mystery of the fortune telling village. After several persuasions, a resident finally agreed to hand over the "treasure of the town and village" to experts for appraisal. This so-called "treasure of the town and village" refers to an ancient book, handed down from generation to generation, which records the essence of Xuejiawan Village, which is equivalent to a textbook-like existence.
After getting the book, the experts carefully studied it and found that the content and form of the book were quite similar to Zhou Yi, but the content did not have any so-called "earth-shattering secrets", nor did it record Xue Jiawan's "past life memory". Under the divergent opinions, the story of Xuejiawan Village has added a bit of mystery.
The mysterious fortune-telling village naturally has many legendary anecdotes, the most famous of which is the story of fortune-telling for the Yongzheng Emperor. It is said that one day the Yongzheng Emperor took the prime minister on a tour to Xuejiawan Village, met a gentleman who was a bu gua, and went forward to calculate the fortune, and after some inquiry, the fortune teller said: "You are the destiny of the Son of Heaven, and the person next to you is the person who assists you." ”
Yongzheng's heart trembled after listening, but he was not shocked, and the fortune teller added: "I will become your soldier waiter." The fortune teller even extrapolated when he would be in office. Yongzheng did not immediately express his position after listening to it, and after returning to the dprk, he immediately issued an edict to summon the fortune teller to Beijing.
Yongzheng originally wanted to use this incident to thwart the fortune teller's "reckoning", but who expected that the rain on the way to the road was continuous, delaying the trip, and the final arrival time was consistent with the previously calculated time, and the position of the soldier waiter was vacant in the middle of the country. To his surprise, the Yongzheng Emperor appointed the fortune teller as a soldier's attendant.
With the passage of time, the current Xuejiawan Village, relying on fortune telling for a living, is becoming less and less, and young people have left their hometowns to find a way out in the vast world outside. In the context of the state's advocacy of respect for science, fortune telling seems to be getting smaller and smaller in the private market, and it is obviously impossible to get rich by fortune telling.
In 2013, the Xuejiawan Bu Gua technique was included in the lanzhou intangible cultural heritage catalogue, and the skill was permanently preserved. Now Xuejiawan Village, I am afraid that only the old man still continues the tradition left by the previous generation and continues his fortune-telling business, but it is also regarded as one of the characteristics of the tourism industry, after all, the intersection with the times is the basis for survival.
Compared with fortune telling, the outside world is obviously more attractive to young people, and young people have a high level of education, and there are doubts about the authenticity of fortune telling. With the deepening of the country's modernization, the ideas of respecting science, advocating science, and opposing superstition have deepened, and the overall cultural level of the people has increased. The market space for fortune telling has been severely compressed, and the inability to support their families is a fatal blow to young people, and the inheritance of Bu Gua is naturally "sniped" by the historical process.
Now from a scientific point of view of fortune telling, it is only by observing the color of speech, observing the behavior of the other party, and then using psychological words to guide the other party, to put it bluntly, it is a psychological game. Fortune tellers are also considered to be in the service industry, naturally to please each other, and the ability to talk and watch people cook is the ability to watch the family.
Under the call of the state to respect science and oppose superstition, fortune telling seems to have become a kind of irony. During that period, the people's cultural level was low, their lives were difficult, they believed in the gods, and they had few means of earning a living, and they were constrained by the actual conditions, and people were reluctant to rely on the sky to eat. All this has brought the soil for the development of fortune telling. It's just that now not only is the market seriously shrinking, there are fewer people willing to believe in fortune telling, and even the young people who are engaged in the fortune telling industry are getting fewer and fewer, only the older generation is still sticking to it, of course, this is also a kind of progress of the times.
The mysterious Xuejiawan Village has also begun to slowly fade the veil of mystery. The old custom of intermarriage in the village has also been broken, which scientifically avoids the serious drawbacks of marriage caused by the marriage of close relatives, and there is no harm. The young people in the village have a continuously improved cultural level, and they have also become suspicious of Bu Gua, and they choose to go to the outside world to break in, and the so-called "Strange Book" is just an ordinary Bu Gua teaching material similar to Zhou Yi.
Compared with fortune telling itself, The Shao sentence has become the cultural accumulation of the history of Xuejiawan Village. After the inheritance of history, Shao Sentence has become a cultural symbol, witnessing the development and change of Xuejiawan Village, and humanistic culture has become the most precious nostalgia and identity of the mysterious village. Perhaps in the current Xuejiawan village, worshipping the "happy god" is still one of the annual customs in the village, but the meaning may have become begging for the health and stability of the family and a prosperous life.