Building Bonds through Kau Cim: MA Thesis by Wai Ming Choi

University of Tartu Asia Centre scholarship recipient Wai Ming Choi examines the Taoist oracle practice Kau Cim through fresh anthropological lens.

We are pleased to announce that the University of Tartu Asia Centre scholarship in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities was awarded to Wai Ming Choi for the MA thesis "Divine Words for Mortal Warmth: Community Engagement through Taoist Kau Cim Divination“.

Combining anthropology, religious studies, and Asian cultural traditions, the thesis explores the experience of the traditional Taoist oracle ritual Kau Cim. Rather than focusing solely on the symbolic texts used in the ritual, the study foregrounds the interpretive process and social functions through first-hand ethnographic research. Wai Ming Choi’s work challenges conventional approaches and highlights the human element in this spiritual practice.

Wai Ming Choi completed the thesis at the international MA programme Folkloristics and Applied Heritage Studies held by the Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu. Thesis supervisor was Margaret Lyngdoh.

Read below an interview with the author about the choosing of the topic as well as most surprising findings.

What was your main trigger whilst choosing this topic for your thesis on the community engagement through Taoist Kau Cim divination?

I decided to focus on Kau Cim divination because I realized how Hongkongers seldom think about it seriously despite how important and familiar it is to us. As for the community engagement part, I didn’t really choose to make it the topic of the thesis — it was just where my fieldwork materials had led me. I did notice how existing research on Kau Cim tended to overlook the interpersonal interactions involved in it, but it was my interlocutors (the fortune-tellers) who made me realize how those interactions have the capacity, way greater than I had expected, to create bonds between people and bring the community together. In honour of them, I decided to make community engagement in Kau Cim the highlight of my thesis.

What challenges did you face during your research, and how did you overcome them?

Gaining the trust of my interlocutors and getting them to talk to me more. At first, I approached my interlocutors as clients in an attempt to build organic connections with them, but soon I realized this approach could sometimes reduce our interactions into mere transactions, and they would not talk much beyond providing me their fortune-telling services. Luckily there were over a hundred fortune-tellers in my fieldwork spot, and some of them were more talkative than the others. It only took some patience until I found someone who was willing to provide me with the insights I needed.

Were there any surprising or unexpected discoveries in your research?

I have told a story in presentations before about encountering a fortune teller who was born in the same village as my mother. My mother is a Hakka, an ethnic sub-group of Han Chinese, and in her culture a village is usually a big extended family in which all villagers share the same surname. In my fieldwork, I met a fortune-teller who could speak Hakkanese and had the same surname. Upon asking, we realized that my mother and he were born in the same small Hakka village in Guangdong province, mainland China. He moved away from the village at four, way before my mother was born, and was disconnected from his Hakka origin since then. Our conversation had been quite transactional until that point, but he looked genuinely very happy knowing we shared the same ancestral origin. This encounter is not the main point of my thesis, but I just think it’s a cool and heartwarming little story.

Considering the current situation with the engaging elderly community members today then what are the three most important lessons from your thesis that we, as a society could use?

I think it is that most of them just want to be listened, and once you show them the willingness to listen to them, they are actually quite friendly. Another thing I think would help is to bear in mind that they weren’t born retired and idle, that they also have (very rich) personal histories and are likely experts in a field or two. Perhaps ask them about their profession, as my fieldwork has proven that to be a very rewarding experience. Unfortunately it is also common for them to display values that are nowadays considered outdated or even problematic, and I think it is important in moments like this to remain both critical and understanding, to remember that they are also the products of their times but not willing advocates of evil.

What advice would you give to other students or researchers interested in this field?

As I have discussed in my thesis, I would like to see more future research in divination to be aware of the personal and interpersonal natures of fortune-telling. One of the reasons I chose this topic is that most of the academic discussions about Kau Cim tend to focus only on the tool of divination (the oracle poems), ignore the human involvement, and discuss the ritual only on theoretical levels. While perhaps not every divination is handled in a vacuum like Kau Cim, I would love to see more researchers watching out for forms of folklore that are taken out of their human context and filling in the gap.