The impossible to read - Tung Shing

I love not only reading but also collecting books. Some books in my collection are for me easy to digest, such as Atlas Shrugged, Das Kapital, A Brief History of Time, and To Kill a Mockingbird. While some are impossible to read pass the first 10 pages, such as Ulysses, Al-Quran, The Golden Notebook, and The Iliad. For these books, I always think that I am not able to read it not because my level of understanding is not good enough. Instead it is because it is not the right time for me yet. Take as example my favorite book of all time : The Catcher in the Rye. I would not say it is for everybody. Without a certain life experience, The Catcher just won't have the same impact. Without, the story would just appear to be bland and Holden would seem to be mildly annoying at best. 

Tung Shing (通勝) used to be on the "impossible to digest" side of the spectrum. But after my grandpa's death a few years ago, it appeared to be the right time to pick up Tung Shing again and dig in. May be it was because his death forced me to face my own mortality, may be it made me realize that what it wanted to say in this book was important to pass down to generations to come. My grandpa was always the only person in my family to read and understand it. By curiosity, I once or twice consulted my grandpa on some parts of the book but never really went in depth. But since his death, I became the only one in the family who has Classical Chinese ( 文言文) background thus the capability to tackle Tung Shing. I feel I have the responsibility to study and pass down the knowledge. Now I must carry the torch.

First of all, a crash course on Tung Shing. Tung Shing is a Chinese almanac and divination guide according to Wikipedia. But it is more than just that as explained in this website which I quote :

"The first few pages, consisting of the year zodiac ... "Spring Ox Diagram" (春牛圖), "Annual Stars Directions" (神煞), and "Heavenly God Bestowing Luck" (天官賜福) ... are unique to each year while the last 20% of the Almanac, which consists of the calendar section, is also different for each year. The 80% portion, which is repeated every year, contains topics ranging from face reading (面相), bazi (八字), Dong Gong date selection (董公擇日), talismans, various fortune telling systems, year charts, etc."

It is a common practice to buy a copy of the lastest Tung Shing before the Chinese New Year and store it in home altar when it is not used. According to my grandpa, one can also hang Tung Shing at the door for protection against the evil spirits as it contains talismans of Zhang Tian Shi (張天師). For the same reason, my grandpa said to me once not to simply discard Tung Shing from previous years. Instead just leave them in the cabinet of our home altar.

As one can see from above, the contents of the 80% invariant portion of Tung Shing is very diverse. So much so that on some topics, I still don't have any idea what they serve. The following is the list of topics that I understand or at least understand the concept, in order of appearance in the copy I own :

- conversion table between Chinese Zodiac hours and international 24-hour system
- conversion table between Chinese and Gregorian calendars
- traditional customs
- Zhang Tian Shi's (張天師) talismans and their uses
- Zhou Gong's dream dictionary / 周公解夢
- divination based on your birthday date in Chinese calendar
- miscellaneous words of wisdom from Confucius
- list of formats for formal letters, wedding invitations, birthday invitations
- The Twenty-four Filial Exemplers / 二十四孝
- the complete matrix of titles for family members
- conversion table between 24 solar terms and Gregorian calendar (24 solar terms just been listed as one of the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in December last year)
- ZhuGe Liang's divination / 諸葛神數
- Three Character Classic / 三字經
- Thousand Character Classic / 千字文
- Hundred Family Surname / 百家姓
- Zeng Guang Xian Wen / 增廣賢文
- Zhu Zi Zhi Jia Ge Yan / 朱子治家格言
- Chinese medicinal herbal recipes for a list of common maladies
- face reading
- moleosophy (mole divination)
- palm reading

Holding Tung Shing like a
bamboo book.

Even after I list down those I understand, there is still about 50% of the book that I don't understand. However the thing about Tung Shing that drives me crazy isn't the diversity of the topics but the lack of a table of contents, which makes the quick search impossible unless you know the book like the back of your hand. On the ergonomic side, the character size is sometimes too small and inconsistent, making the reading experience quite challenging. One good design worth mentioning is the odd dimension of the book. Its width to height ratio is really small, which means it is way higher than average books with around the same width. Probably this is designed as such to accustom the vertical writing and to be hold in one hand and read like an ancient bamboo book.

As anyone with a scientific background, I have to admit that there might be many topics and skills such as talismans, divination, face reading, and etc. that no longer apply in our modern world. The way I see it, there are still reasons to learn them. First they are fun. I totally get the fact that fortune telling is so much fun and I am glad I know a few techniques. But never ever believe in it. Secondly, even though it doesn't make sense in modern day, it is still interesting to see the way they work, and the way people think in the past. Who knows the combination of different perspectives can somehow amount to breakthrough to leap humanity forward. The fact is, reading Al-Quran doesn't mean I am a Muslim ; reading Mein Kampf doesn't mean I am pro neo-Nazism ; reading Lolita doesn't mean I am a pedophile ; and reading Tung Shing doesn't mean I am superstitious. It is all about gaining empathy and perspective, to gain a better understanding of things existed before us and things still exist around us. I hope by this blog entry, I can spark the interest of some of the readers on Tung Shing.