Jobless Find Future in Fortunes

Hong Kong’s biggest bank gave Alic Pang a choice: Take a buyout to quit or face deep cuts in benefits.

The 14-year employee decided to leave HSBC Holdings to pursue a new livelihood -- the ancient practice of Chinese fortunetelling, guided by the placement art of feng shui, astrology and other factors such as the exact time of a client’s birth.

Pang hasn’t looked back. He says fortunetelling offers him an unbeatable combination of self-enlightenment, job security and a satisfaction that he had long since lost in the drudgery of banking.

“It’s a career about making money and helping others at the same time,” he said.

He’s just one of many.

Hong Kong has been suffering through high unemployment, which hit a record 8.7% last year because of the SARS outbreak. That has stirred a crisis of confidence in the once-booming economy that has many looking for new careers.

Longtime feng shui masters fret that the rush into fortunetelling as a business will degrade the ancient art.

“If people are just doing this for the money, they will end up being frauds,” said So Man-fung, a former hairdresser who after more than 20 years as a feng shui consultant is regarded as one of Hong Kong’s masters. “If you just think about money, it just won’t come to you.”

Pang had been taking fortunetelling classes for a few months when HSBC offered him severance two years ago.

Now 46, he is still studying under his feng shui master, Au Chung-tak, and has a job helping Au establish a fortunetelling training center. Pang hopes someday to teach full time, passing on knowledge to others in career crisis.

“Many people in their 40s face the risk of being laid off,” Pang said. “We hope to introduce to them the true concepts of this Chinese art and train them to become consultants.”

Hong Kong has been in a prolonged downturn, draining away its old optimism over the last few years. Some people thrown out of white-collar work have moved down in the job market -- taxi drivers who can tell you about former management positions, for instance.

There are no official statistics on the number of fortunetellers in Hong Kong, although some veterans estimate a few thousand. Lee Shing-chak, a feng shui consultant, says their ranks have “multiplied by many times” with the inrush of newcomers.

Anyone can set up shop as a fortuneteller or feng shui master since no operating license or certificate is required.

Some practitioners are adept marketers. Aside from telling fortunes and offering feng shui advice, they publish books and cartoons, predict political developments and stock market fluctuations, or teach students in universities. They comment on celebrity relationships. Some appear on TV or act in movies.

Clients range from ordinary people to the rich and famous, making fortunetelling lucrative for some. Newcomers charge around $26 for a life prediction based on the exact time of a client’s birth, while some veterans can get 20 times more for the normally one-hour consultation.

Mak Ling-ling, a former law firm executive, has been a full-time feng shui and astrology consultant since 1998 and says she earns about $32,000 a month. “It’s good to have another skill for survival,” said Mak, 38, who began learning fortunetelling when she was 15.

Chinese fortunetelling has its skeptics, of course. And Mak acknowledges that predictions aren’t perfect, but says that is true of many professions.

“The weather observatory comes out with poor predictions from time to time even though it is well equipped with all kinds of scientific instruments,” she said. “How can we guarantee our predications to be absolutely correct? They’re based on manual calculations according to the ancient principles.”

So, the feng shui master, says an ethical consultant knows there are times to acknowledge that they can’t give advice.

“Some women come up to me, right before they get married, and ask who they should marry,” So said. “How I can help them to decide in an hour of consultation? They are the ones who know the correct answer.”