Enchantment in an Age of Reform: Fortune-Telling Fever in Post-Mao China, 1980s–1990s*

Soon after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China experienced a ‘fortune-telling fever’. After having been suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party for the previous three decades, fortune tellers re-emerged in the 1980s to publish extensively on the topic and ply their trade in public. Yet despite the general relaxation of state policies toward folk beliefs, fortune telling was still considered a ‘superstition’ and therefore remained against the law. To bypass ongoing proscriptions against divinatory practices and publications, fortune tellers began to frame their undertakings in a language that closely mirrored two priorities of the post-Mao state: the advancement of scientific research and the reclamation of traditional culture. As this article argues, the example of China’s fortune-telling fever adds a new perspective to studies that have viewed the resurgence of Chinese spirituality as a form of communal resistance against an atheist regime. Rather than combating the government’s accusation that their practices were superstitious, fortune tellers instead positioned themselves as allies of the state by appealing to its rhetoric of science and cultural nationalism. Downplaying the mystical qualities of their craft, they framed divination as an academic and economic endeavour, one that was both compatible with secular modernity and in keeping with the Chinese Communist Party’s demands for entrepreneurial activity.