Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting the future. It is common around the world and practiced in different cultures. In Asia, the more common forms of fortune telling include face reading, palm reading and the Bazi (eight characters). In Singapore, fortune-telling is also known as suan-ming which literally translates to ‘calculating fate’ in Mandarin.

Fortune Tellers often take on the role equivalent to that of management consultants and advise people on business and investment decisions. It is also very common for the Chinese community to seek fortune tellers prior to a wedding to determine if their spouses are compatible with them and if they would have a good future together.

A famous Chinese fortune-teller Su Shi came up with a maxim: (translated from Mandarin) “One fate, Two luck, Three fengshui, Four karma, Five education”. Interpretations suggest that these five components make up a person’s fortune. Some believe that the order of these components is important: education is not useful if fate does not put in you a proper place at the beginning of your life. There are others who also believe that there is no order to the sequence.

Some people do not believe in fortune-telling and that our future depends largely on our decisions in life. There are others who believe in a pre-destined life, and turn to fortune-telling to help them “see” what the future holds so they can make better decisions.

Nonetheless, fortune-telling dates way back and can still be seen practised in Singapore today. In the Chinese society, it is a respected and important part of the social and business culture.

Not only practised in the Chinese community, the Indians have their way of predicting the future. Indian fortune-tellers are assisted by their parrots, who will acknowledge the birth date of their curious clients before walking down a line of cards and to pick one, which will be handed over and interpreted by the fortune-teller. The parrot may also shuffle the cards and select one with its beak. Indian fortune-telling is a rarer sight compared to the Chinese fortune-telling, but they still can be found along the streets of Little India in Singapore.