Mr. Xuan is a shy, retiring young man full of stories. One unusual thing about this man is his own education. I asked him once where his story bank came from and he told me about one of his teachers, the last surviving “zhuangyuan” – the last surviving graduate of the old imperial examination system.



Students would gather around him expectantly, each one receiving just those precise words of wisdom appropriate to his particular situation. Occasionally there would be a suggestion regarding a book which might help the student understand whatever he was grappling with in his life. Mr. Xuan told me that his teacher never gave summaries or background information concerning the content of any of the recommended books. He just expected students to read the book, and ask about any difficult points. The teacher mainly would just look at his students, and from the expression on their faces, the teacher would know roughly how they were doing in their lives, their studies, and would decide which sources of wisdom would help the student move ahead in life. I think Mr. Xuan aspires to be a similar sort of teacher.

He himself is unusually competent in quite a collection of traditional arts, such things as calligraphy with a brush, carving signature seals, ink painting and yin-yang philosophy, including the application of this philosophy in medicine, warfare and business strategy, or in architectural design, not to mention the art -- no, science -- of predicting things that are not yet obvious to the other people.

In describing the relationship of yin and yang, he describes a leaf lying curled up inside the shoot of a small growing plant. You cannot see that leaf with your eyes, but through a microscope it is clear that it is there and the presence of the curled up leave will cause the leaf to sprout eventually if nothing happens in the meantime to stop it.

Mr. Xuan sometimes makes predictions about the future and he claims that this is neither mysterious nor spooky, any more than knowing what date the moon will become full three months from now. He says there is nothing complicated about predicting which of us, in a group of people at the dinner table, will experience happy times ahead and which of us are heading for a hard time.

He figures this out from wrinkles. Those of us with smile wrinkles are bound to be happy most of the time. Happy people tend to attract appreciative friends, making them feel secure and content. This attracts good things to life, and even when unhappy events occur, the support of many friends makes the difficulty easier to cope with. A person with this kind of wrinkles will have wishes come true. A glum person will attract the opposite, few friends, and plenty of unpleasantness.

Mr. Xuan’s explanations make the yin-yang theory sound down-to-earth until he starts suggesting to someone that he be careful not to develop some specified disease, or tells someone what he is like at home and the kind of difficulties he is having with his family. How can anyone know this sort of thing? His answer is to challenge listeners to learn the trick for themselves, to study the rules of yin and yang, and to try out the system on real life issues.