Yu Kwang-chung’s BaZi: an Autumn Tree, and One Small Postage Stamp

Yu Kwang-chung (余光中, 1928–2017) was one of the best-loved Chinese poets of the twentieth century. He was born on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, the Double Ninth Festival, when people traditionally wear sprigs of dogwood, so he called himself “a child of the dogwood”. Born in Nanjing, he spent his teenage years in Sichuan during the war with Japan, went to Hong Kong in 1949 and to Taiwan the following year, and then taught and wrote in Taipei, Hong Kong and Kaohsiung. His best-known poem is “Nostalgia” (鄉愁), which begins with a small postage stamp. His birth hour has never been made public. His year, month and day pillars are Wu-Chen, Ren-Xu, Jia-Wu (戊辰 壬戌 甲午): Jia Wood born in deep autumn, and all twelve possible hours read weak, favoring Wood and Water. The chart has two features that are easy to remember: Indirect Resource shows on the month stem, and the branches combine into a Hurting Officer Fire combination.

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 0.11 and 0.31: weak in all twelve, and Wood and Water are favorable 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: an autumn Jia Wood, Indirect Resource on the stem, Hurting Officer in combination

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

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

In the tradition, Hurting Officer is the Ten God of the gifted writer: literary flair, strong opinions, a refusal to back down. Indirect Resource is the Ten God of the scholar: a love of books and an eye of one’s own. A chart with Indirect Resource on the stem and a Hurting Officer combination below, belonging to a man who was at once poet, essayist, translator and university professor, is hard not to look at twice. But Hurting Officer is unfavorable for him: the brighter the talent, the greater the drain. All of these are readings made after the fact.

Luck pillars: twenty years all favorable, forty years all unfavorable

For a man born in a yang year (the year stem Wu is yang), the luck pillars run forwards, starting at about age 7.

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

The shape of this table is extreme: the first two luck pillars, Gui-Hai and Jia-Zi, are favorable in both stem and branch (Water is Resource, Wood is companions), while from 1984 four luck pillars in a row, Wu-Chen, Ji-Si, Geng-Wu, Xin-Wei, are unfavorable throughout.

Yet set against his life, these two stretches are almost the reverse of what you would expect. The twenty fully favorable years were years of displacement: fleeing the Japanese invasion, the civil war, crossing the strait to Taiwan. The forty fully unfavorable years were his later life, settled in Kaohsiung, with a shelf of books to his name and widely honored. The one thing that does make sense is that Resource stands for study, and through the most turbulent twenty years he never stopped studying, all the way to his degree from National Taiwan University.

We set this mismatch down as it is. A favorable luck pillar describes whether the chart is comfortable, not whether the times are peaceful; an unfavorable one describes a drain, not a lack of achievement. What kind of era a person lives through is not in their BaZi.

1972: “Nostalgia” was written in a fully favorable year

1972 was a Ren-Zi year: the stem Ren Water is Indirect Resource and the branch Zi Water is Direct Resource, both favorable, and Resource is exactly what his chart needs most. That year, in Taipei, he wrote “Nostalgia”, in only twenty minutes by his own account. 1974, a Jia-Yin year, is Wood in both stem and branch and likewise fully favorable; that year he went to teach in Hong Kong. Resource and companions are this chart’s favorable elements, and two important turning points both fell in fully favorable years. We list these parallels and take them no further.

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. Yu Kwang-chung’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.

Yu Kwang-chung has no reliable birth time, but the Moon stayed in Capricorn for the whole of the day he was born, so a Libra Sun and Capricorn Moon are certain. A Libra Sun values harmony and beauty, which matches a poetic style that cares so much about sound and parallel structure. A Capricorn Moon is reserved, dutiful and slow to show feeling; “Nostalgia” is written with great restraint, yet it has moved several generations of readers, which is very much how a Capricorn Moon expresses itself. Mercury is in Scorpio and retrograde, traditionally read as deep thinking and a habit of weighing every word again and again. The Moon opposes Pluto, suggesting a strong sense of loss and attachment deep in the emotions; for a poet who moved many times in his life and wrote the definitive poems of longing for home, the reading fits closely.

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.

Is there a Hurting Officer 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 Resource and Hurting Officer show in your chart, 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.