Wuxing: An Investigation Into the Interpretations of Traditional Chinese Cosmology in Contemporary China

摘要

This paper, based on the author's ethnographic descriptions, explores an alternative narrative of the relationship between traditional Chinese culture and 'Western science' in contemporary China. China is facing a revival of traditional culture at both governmental and official levels trying to call back the dominance of traditional cultures and cosmologies in China's social and political discourses as well as people's daily lives. Viewing China as culturally unique and relative to its Western counterparts is popular among the voices of traditional culture advocates. Yet the fortune-tellers in this paper have a different approach to this issue, claiming that traditional cosmology represented in the Five Agents is not culturally relative but more universal than any other cultures and cosmologies in the world, including science. This approach generates a form of cultural-cosmological hegemony that tries to absorb other types of cultures.