A record number of babies have been born this year in Beijing: 60,000 already, despite the strict population control policy. This is the Year of the Monkey, considered lucky by the Chinese. Last year was the Year of the Sheep, and next year the Year of the Chicken, both considered unlucky. With the economic boom, old superstitions and practices have come back.

Many buildings have no fourth floor; from the third they go straight to the fifth. You have to hunt really hard to find number plates ending in four. Four is an unlucky number.

Officially, fortune-tellers, like zodiac columns in newspapers, continue to be banned. In reality, like the colourful cutouts of monkeys seen everywhere, they flourish. They don?t set up shop openly; indeed, they are still a novelty at tourist sites, reading faces, hands and shaking wooden sticks. Since they are not supposed to be there, they do not charge a fixed price; but as one young man, who had his fortune told for 10 yuan, reasoned, had he paid more, he may have got an even rosier future predicted. Although parents do not arrange marriages any more, they consult fortune-tellers before their children get married. One woman whose purse was stolen in a bus first informed the police. Even as they were trying to retrieve it, she told them not to bother ? her fortune-teller had told her she would not get it back.

Blame it on past sins

As in India, education is competitive and pressure-filled. Consequently, before major tests, parents and children throng temples. Temples and fortune-tellers are a major site for ?miracle? cures, patronized even by university graduates. The gods worshipped here range from the Buddha to various mythological figures.

Feng Shui is the basis for many new constructions, and is also resorted to if a person has a series of misfortunes. Water from an apparently pure source, say a mountain spring, is sprinkled in the house, some coins placed under the doormat, and so on.

Strangely, it is not just the new generation, growing up in an ideological vacuum, that has found solace in belief in an unknown power. Even those who underwent years of political education have fallen back on their old ways of thinking. A 60-plus grandmother, who had been in the forefront of Communist Youth League activities after Liberation in 1949, feels that if she survived the great wars, droughts and famines of those years, she can do without Feng Shui now. But, this does not stop her from blaming her past sins for the fact that she has two granddaughters and no grandson. Her children know that they cannot wear white shoes, nor speak about certain topics during the Chinese New Year, in her presence. These would signal that they want her to die soon.

The rational way

Ironically, the rational values she instilled in her children have not left them till today. Her daughter, a successful career woman, has not forgotten the daily exhortations against blind belief that she learnt in school during the Cultural Revolution. Shocked at the superstitious behaviour all around her, she sees to it that her own daughter, a 15-year-old high school student, takes what little political education she receives in school today, which says that rational solutions can be found to all problems.

But like Indians, the Chinese can change their beliefs according to their convenience. Though red and gold were traditional bridal colours, the preferred apparel today is the Christian white gown. If the Westerners can flourish despite wearing white at weddings, it must be alright, goes the argument. Besides, white is not forbidden at weddings the way black is. Black clothes were in fact taboo on any occasion earlier, but today, the three-piece black suit is considered normal unisex attire.