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By James Healy It was my good fortune recently to travel to Beijing's far-flung Pinggu district, where I was greeted by strikingly blue skies and white, cotton-puff clouds. An extraordinary feast of Yangtze fat-head fish cooked over a wood fire awaited me, but that was merely icing on the cake. I went to Pinggu, about an hour's drive from my home in Chaoyang district, specifically to consult with Liu Ming, a fortune teller in his 80s who, though deprived of sight, is known for his insights. Only once before have I consulted a seer, and that episode increased my respect for the mysteries of the universe. I came across the clairvoyant by chance as she was seated in a lighted booth on a dark, remote hillside at a Halloween pumpkin patch in my US hometown. She told me I would soon travel to a faraway land and, in fact, three months later I was offered a job in Beijing. In Pinggu, my Chinese friends and I arrived at Liu's home after passing through a gate that creaked eerily as it swung in the breeze. The seer sat cross-legged atop a raised brick platform on which bedding was neatly stacked. The furrows of his forehead and wrinkles on his face were bathed in brilliant sunlight that streamed through open curtains. Pausing occasionally as he coughed and leaned forward to use a plastic bucket as a spittoon, he asked my friend Anne, a Beijing native, to tell him her full name as well as the date and time of her birth. | 
