C.K. Yang’s BaZi: a Candle Flame in Midsummer, and Taiwan’s First Olympic Medal

C.K. Yang (Yang Chuan-kwang, 楊傳廣) was an Amis man from the Malan community in Taitung, and became known as the “Iron Man of Asia”. He won the decathlon at the 1954 and 1958 Asian Games, took decathlon silver at the 1960 Rome Olympics, the first Olympic medal ever won by an athlete from Taiwan, and in 1963 became the first person in history to score more than 9,000 points in the decathlon. His birth hour has never been made public. His year, month and day pillars are Gui-You, Ji-Wei, Ding-Chou (癸酉 己未 丁丑): Ding Fire born in high summer, and all twelve possible hours read weak. The most striking thing about this chart is that his two greatest victories came in years that were unfavorable across the board.

Birth data: a date only, and all twelve hours agree

With no hour, we follow our rule and cast all twelve hours:

Every hour scores between 0.13 and 0.33: weak in all twelve, favoring Wood and Fire in all twelve. The reading below uses only the year, month and day pillars; the age at which luck pillars begin is estimated from a noon birth and could be off by a few months.

Three pillars: a candle flame in midsummer

Our strength engine: below 0.35 reads weak, above 0.55 reads strong.

Ding Fire is drained by Earth, worn down by Metal and attacked by Water, so the chart favors Wood (Resource) to feed it and Fire (companions) to help it, and disfavors Earth (Output), Metal (Wealth) and Water (Officer/Killings).

Plenty of Eating God plus Seven Killings clashing the Day Master is traditionally read as “gifted, able to endure hardship, under heavy pressure”. In the classics Eating God stands for innate talent, and Seven Killings for competition and struggle. The decathlon asks an athlete to run, jump and throw across ten events in two days; it is the track-and-field event that most tests all-round talent and willpower. The parallel is easy to draw, but it is still a reading made after the fact.

Luck pillars

For a man born in a yin year (the year stem Gui is yin), the luck pillars run backwards, starting at about age 2.

“fav / unfav” reads the stem first, then the branch: whether each one’s element is favorable (useful), unfavorable, or neither (neutral) for this chart.

Almost the whole peak of his athletic career falls in the Bing-Chen luck pillar of 1954–1963: the stem Bing Fire, Rob Wealth, is favorable, and the branch Chen Earth, Hurting Officer, is unfavorable. A favorable stem over an unfavorable branch can be read as “his own strength is there, but so is a heavy drain underneath”. Decathlon training is brutally demanding, and in these ten years he went from a student at an agricultural school in Taitung to the podium at the Rome Olympics.

Where it doesn’t fit: his two biggest wins came in fully unfavorable years

1954 was a Jia-Wu year: the stem Jia Wood is Direct Resource and the branch Wu Fire is Friend, both favorable, and that is the year he won his first Asian Games gold. That fits. But his next two big wins came in 1958 (Wu-Xu) and 1960 (Geng-Zi), years in which both stem and branch were unfavorable: Wu-Xu is solid Earth, and Geng-Zi is Metal plus Water. On the usual reading these should have been his hardest years, and instead he won his second Asian Games title and an Olympic medal.

We single out these two years because sport shows the limits of BaZi better than almost anything. The result of a competition depends on years of training, on coaches, on rivals (the man who won gold in 1960 was his own UCLA teammate, Rafer Johnson), on how his body felt that day and on the weather, and none of that is in the year pillar. Talk only about 1954 and the chart looks uncannily accurate; put 1958 and 1960 alongside it and you see the whole picture.

Where does the chart miss his real life?

Zi Wei Dou Shu: no birth hour, no chart

In Zi Wei Dou Shu the Life Palace, the Body Palace, the bureau and the position of every star all depend on the birth hour. C.K. Yang’s birth hour has never been made public, so we do not cast a Zi Wei chart.

Western astrology chart

The same moment of birth, cast as a Western natal chart (tropical zodiac, Placidus houses, the same engine as our natal chart tool). A natal chart uses the sky at the moment of birth, so it needs no true-solar-time correction, but it does need the latitude of the birthplace to fix the Ascendant and the houses. BaZi and Zi Wei are both derived from the Chinese calendar, while a natal chart computes planetary positions directly. Because the three systems start from different places, the chart is listed on its own below, followed by where it agrees with the BaZi and Zi Wei readings.

C.K. Yang has no reliable birth time, so the Ascendant and houses cannot be cast, and the Moon moved from Aquarius into Pisces on the day he was born, so even the Moon is uncertain. The Cancer Sun values family and belonging to one’s people; he was Amis, and after retiring he went home to work in public life. Mars is in Libra (detriment); tradition says Mars there struggles to succeed on brute force alone and has to work through balance and all-round effort. The decathlon is exactly the event that demands every discipline be developed evenly, which makes this an intriguing reading. Saturn is in its own sign of Aquarius, pointing to discipline and hard training. BaZi reads him as weak Ding Fire winning Olympic silver in a year that was unfavorable across the board, and the natal chart in astrology cannot show that year’s ups and downs either; you would need that year’s transits.

Domicile, exaltation, fall and detriment in brackets are the classical categories for how comfortably a planet works in a sign; they are not verdicts of good or bad. For how to read the big three, the ten planets and aspects, see rising sign, Moon sign, the ten planets and aspects. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any sign can be made to explain it.

How much Eating God and Seven Killings are in your chart?

The three pillars, strength score and luck pillars on this page all come from the same engine as the chart on our home page. Enter your birth date to see whether Eating God and Seven Killings show on your stems, whether your Day Master can carry them, and which elements are favorable for you. If you do not know your birth hour, you can do what this page does and cast all twelve hours.