Hi. I know some people that go to see fortune tellers. At first I didn’t believe it, but I’m getting curious. Does anyone have any experience on what to look for and how much to pay? Recommendations? I realize this may sound stupid. Glad I don’t have to identify myself. 
In Taipei the guys at Longshan Temple and the temple on Minchuan East Rd are particularly well thought of. The Longshan Templke one is an elaborate ceremony that you do yourself - throwing woden things ont he ground getting numbers with instructions and buying offeringsand looking at wooden rods and stuff. I couldn’t understand it, but maybe you could get someone to explain it to you.
At the Minchuan East Rd temple (the big Daoist one) there are a wide range of fortune tellers in the underpass outside the temple and they’re suppossed to be accurate
Bri
Hi thanks! Do you know how much it costs usually? Have you been before and (million dollar question) do you believe it yourself?
I dunno how much it costs. My girlfriend keeps talking about trying which is why I know, but she hasn’t yet. On the one hand she’s curious and on the other hand she says she’s not supersttious and that Buddha frowned on fortune-telling.
Personally: Do I believe it? Not really I guess. I’d wait and hear the answer before I believed it. I do believe that good fortune-telling can help you understand a problem though I guess. Oh and my self administered I Ching readin I did years ago with the help of a libraaary book helped me find my lost sunglasses
Bri
Actually I went and triedone of these on Thursday. We went to Longshan Temple which ias worth a visit if you’re fortune telling or not.
It was actually quite easy to do our fortunes. You pick up these two wood-chip things then stand in fromt of the altar and tell the gods your name and birthdate and what you want to ask about then throw the chips on the ground. If one is up and one down you are allowed to ask whereas if both are up you can’t and if both are down the gods are just laughing or something. Then you pull a bamboo rod out of a basket and it has a number on it. Then you go to all these boxes and get a slip of paper with your answer on it. If you don’t really understand it you can consult a book with more info or go and ask an expert to help interpret it for you. It’s all free, but you can buy soem kind fo offering to put on the altars if you want. Quite fun.
Bri
I had my fortune told a few years back, some things are really accurate, and some things are not at all. I was told that my husband would be white (I had only dated Asians before), he works at a bank (which was true), he has one sister (true) lives on his own (true) has a muscular chest (true) and would be younger than me (also true). The things that haven’t come true yet are that I would own a large corporation and would do some acting. I paid about $100cdn for that I think. Marriage was the last thing on my mind back then. I met my husband in an internet chat room. Pretty weird eh?
As near as I can tell, you can go to any old temple and throw the wood things and take a stick to get your fortune for free. My husband recently asked about a job promotion, which he’d already been assured would go through. When he asked about it at the temple, the gods said “It’s impossible. There’s nothing you can do about it.” The next day he went back to work and found out that he wasn’t eligible for the promotion after all.
Punch, where did you get that expensive reading. I want to try out a fortuneteller that gives me many details about the future and not one where you can only ask one question.
If anyone knows where I can get a very detailed reading, let me know.
There is a large temple on the northeast corner of Min Chuan East Road and Sung Chiang Road in Taipei. There are a lot of fortune tellers in the underground walkway there. If you went with a Chinese friend or associate, you could probably pick one and get a reading.
In my experience, it is necessary to know the day and time of your birth, (including timezone) and be able to convert that into the TAIWANESE TIME in order for a reading to be accurate.
There are fortune tellers all over this place.
I once got a reading by one of the turtle shell guys, however he was as far off the mark, as he could be.
Another guy, using a mixture of astrology and some other traditional chinese stuff got very close, predicting 2 years in andvance nearly the day, I would change jobs, and that I would end up living on the mountain. I am less happy with the fact that he claims that I will never return to live in my native land, and a few other unpalateble things. His way about telling you stuff about yourself, even though he’s never seen you, was also a bit disturbing.
This wasn’t a Taiwanese fortune teller, but my ex told me this story. The mother of one of his high school girlfriends went to a fortune teller, who told her that her only son would die suddently in so many years… must have been something like 7 or 8 years but the point is that she told the mother how many years would pass. She was upset, of course, and wanted to know details. How would he die? Could they prevent it? The fortune teller told her she couldn’t give her the details. (That was just plain cruel to tell her this to begin with!) I attended the same high school as this older kid and was classmates with the mother of his son. Sure enough, he did die a very tragic death. His was one of those freak accidents that happened during the Gulf War in 91. He never even got to meet his son. Very sad, and very freaky.
There’s one next to Kaohsiung train station… he charges 200NT$
well… he’s sorta good but in my opinion, he’s not good at the love part
You can also find them in Shi Lin Night Market, heard few of them are pretty good. If there are large crowd waiting, then that tells you something.
It is by the Holiday KTV…
This is XingTian Temple 行天宮. There are many bus lines that go through here, so it should be no problem getting here. Bus stops are XingTian Temple 行天宮 or MinQuan-SongJiang Intersection 民權松江路口. The fortune tellers are in the pedestrian underpass under the intersection. For the women, there’s also traditional facial hair plucking available! :shock:
Assessing fortune tellers? Be serious. It’s all bullshit, done by the ancient technique of cold reading. It can be fun, though. Look for ones with long lines. Always a good sign.
Vorkosigan
What is cold reading?
I know that they can access you to some degree by looking at you, but my best reading was over the phone.
i am with VOLKSian on this, fortune tells are pure BS. but yes, entertainment and fun. that’s all. caveat emptor. there is no future but the future ye shall inherit when the time comes. nobody knows. nobody. trust me.
girls seem to like this more than boys. like hororscopes. jees!
BS, not really. I don’t really believe in it but there are semi-truth to what they said. (it is better to believe than not to)
Yes, girls like it more than the boys…I guess we are more supersition, but what’s wrong with that right?! 
I didn’t believe what my friend said(he’s not a fortune tellers but he can read ppl…)
he told me some stuff… I didn’t believe the first , second and 3rd times… but what he told me had happened… it’s hard to ignore him after the 3rd time…
That’s the problem with them. Some can be accurate. I read Michael Cricton’s travels. His encounters with fortune tellers gave me the creeps. Hearing a blind old woman telling him that he was working in a white-tiled room with snakes in baskets, horrible sounds and moving pictures of men in high hats being repeated over and over again was a bit too interesting. (She described the cutting room where he was putting the great train robbery together).