Fortune culture is always an important part of Chinese traditional culture. Growing up in China, I experienced the effects of Chinese traditional fortune culture on my daily life. As an example, people always carefully follow the rules of fortune culture when facing the choices, such as the date choice of people’s marriage and funeral or the choice of phone and plate numbers, to achieve the best results. As the growth of Chinese people’s living standards and education level, I thought this culture would decline as the older generation of Chinese grows older. However, I was surprised to find that Chinese young people have already started a new form of praying carnival on the internet. Comparing to the elder generation, their perspectives on the culture are more inclusive and entertaining. Young people are willing to try and create new but self-consistent ways of praying. A koi fish swimming in a pool, an extremely lucky person, an incredible natural phenomenon, or a God created by themselves, all of these could become the target object of their worship or prayer. In this project, I want to discuss the existence of fortune culture in modern society, and finally created a prayer suit that suites modern people.
The whole project start with a book. This is a book about the history of fortune culture in China. The book was separated into three parts, the references, the reflection essays, and the paper about Chinese fortune culture. The book is a key to understand young Chinese’s attitude on fortune culture. Please read it before you start your fortune journey.
The portable shrine is the core of this project. It is an extension of the new forms of prayer, and creates a more portable and standardized way of worship for young people. As the final visual display of this project, I built an experience center of the shrine. And the shrine will be the center of the whole viewer’s experience. In this setting, I designed a guidance system for using the shrine. The table divides the whole setup into two parts. The upper part of the table focuses on the presentation of different God systems and my understanding of the project theme. The part under the table is the experience area of the portable shrine. Viewers can pray to the shrine in this area.
At the starting of the experience process of the new form of prayer, viewers put the fake paper money into the donation box as the sacrifice of prayer. Then, they can turn the turntable to draw out the different parts of the God statue. Viewers have to draw 3 times and get the head, body, and base of the statue in proper order. These seemingly unnecessary behaviors intend to create a sense of ritual and mystery for the whole ceremony. The choosing process looks like gambling implies that praying for blessings is similar to gambling and likes to build connections between their fate and unknowns.
After getting different parts, viewers need to assemble the God statue that belonged to themselves. They can pray to this God in the experience area. Viewers will choose God from the screen within the portable shrine. After that, they will put their phone on the base on the front panel of the shrine. Viewers can choose the prayer supply from their phone screen. I also provide some cards with prayer supplies on it if the viewer doesn’t have a smartphone. As the end of the viewer’s experience, they will sit or kneel on the cushion and share the screenshot of their phone on social media to finish the praying process. More times of retweeting and thumbs-up will bring more luck to the viewer.
Visit this link to see how the portable shrine works.
I hope the portable shrine can bring the most convenient and enjoyable praying experience.
