Pocket almanac: ancient mystic wisdom in English

Checking the Chinese almanac to scope out each day's fortune forecast has become a new trend not just among Chinese but some Americans too, thanks to an English-language pocket version created by the husband-and-wife team of Ken Smith and Joanna C. Lee.

Where there is Chinese, there is an almanac, Smith said, and the popularity of their Pocket Chinese Almanac: Ancient Wisdoms for a Modern World in the US is beyond his imagination.

"Even in America, with my travel agent," he said. "I was trying to find the best day to travel, by which I meant the day with cheapest flight and the cheapest hotel. They used the almanac and told me which day was the best day."

"Many of his clients in New York want to know what day is good to travel," he added.

Lee describes herself as a recovering pianist and an active interpreter and translator. Smith writes about Asian arts and culture for the Financial Times and other publications.

The couple divides their time between Hong Kong and New York and have been advisors on a wide array of cultural projects, including David Henry Hwang's bilingual Broadway comedy Chinglish and Kung Fu, a musical based on the life of Bruce Lee.

They set their wedding date based on the almanac, not only for the best day but also for the best time and place in Hong Kong 10 years ago.

"That was the first time Joanna had really taken the almanac in a serious way," Smith recalled.

Before they married, Lee had a habit of putting "good" or "bad" on Facebook for each week based on the Chinese almanac.

The Chinese almanac has its roots in the imperial calendar, a balance of solar and lunar patterns traditionally maintaining harmony between heaven, earth and mankind. For more than 2,000 years, each succeeding court produced an annual document regulating daily activities.

Even after China adopted the Western solar calendar, and various campaigns sought to eliminate the culture's "feudal superstitions", the lunar-based almanac still held its ground.

In Hong Kong and Taiwan today, it's nearly impossible to find a standard calendar that has no reference to "good" or "bad" days, usually marked in red or black respectively.

Smith said the original intention behind publishing the little pocket book was as a gift for donors of the Museum of Chinese in America in Chinatown, New York.

"The museum was giving it away and people started to pay attention and they wanted more. Then the museum started selling them and ended up selling more than they gave away," Smith said with a laugh.

"For the next year, we started to print some and sell them. Along the way, we made enough money to cover the cost and enough money each year to print the next book," Smith added.

The first edition was 2010. The latest 2016 edition is the seventh in the series.

"The pocket book only posts the good and the bad every day," Lee said. "A big [traditional] almanac is very, very detailed."

Lee said the 128-page condensed guide is more for contemporaries, which indicates good and bad for a broad range of activities - rituals, digging graves, planting, cutting wood, starting a business - based on calculations of lunar and solar patterns.

While most of these activities are rooted in rural society, many have practical applications for modern urban life - meeting friends, seeking medical help, going to court.

Thus the almanac often becomes a game of wits, with its four traditional categories (Agrarian/Labor, Business and Work, Family Matters and Physical Health/Well Being) subject to broad interpretation.

The guide also follows the Chinese calendar, which divides the year into 12 lunar months and 24 solar sub-seasons.

"It's good for people to know and to understand the Chinese calendar and how it is constructed," said Lee.

The pocket almanac was originally condensed and interpreted by Warwick Wong, a Hong Kong architect, who threw himself into a private study - and eventual mastery - of traditional Chinese divination.

"Modern astrology is based on concepts of time and precision that simply didn't exist in ancient China," said Wong.

"People would come to me with only one question: Is it this or that? Like modern science, they were trying to put the world under a laboratory glass. But in reality, we live in a changing environment, and it is more important to see where things are moving," Wong explained.

Lee and Smith will decode the Year of the Monkey with the new Pocket Chinese Almanac at MOCA on Jan 30.

xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com