BOOK VII—PLAUSIBLE PRETENTIONS
(扯謊壩) The Liars' Mart (天話街), T‘ien hua chieh
The above name is applied to the Yamen or temple courtyards or any place where there is concourse of people, and where the fortuneteller, geomancer, physiognomist, sorcerer and witch doctors have their stands. To try and follow these men into all the intricacies of their dark and crooked ways is impossible. It will be our plan to find out what they pretend to accomplish, under what pretences they obtain a living and how the people are fleeced by them. They are divided into classes; the first to mention is the business of the Startler, Ching shêng i (驚生意), under which the following take their places:—
The ts‘ê tzŭ (測字) tells fortunes by dissecting characters and putting them together again.
Suan ming (算命), the fortuneteller. This class differs from the former in that it may pretend to define a whole life, while those who dissect characters generally confine themselves to one particular matter. The fortunetellers are divided into two schools, one called the chang chang tzŭ (張張子), who tells a person's fortune and gives it to his client in writing; the other is known as the t‘ieh pan suan (鐵板算) who are mostly blind, who after hearing the client tell the fortune viva voce.
