Wei Minzhou, the Communist Party Secretary of Xi’an, a city in western China, knew he was in trouble when he was invited for a “chat” with his superiors. He immediately consulted a seer who told him to plant bamboo in front of his house. The Chinese phrase for “bamboo” and “to stop” are homonyms—Wei’s plea for the authorities’ anti-corruption investigation to stop. It didn’t work. In August 2017, Wei was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for bribery, pending prosecution in the judicial system.
The Chinese Communist Party is an atheist organization and rules China by tightly controlling what citizens can and cannot believe in, yet Wei is just one of a cohort of officials who have resorted to premodern practices of divination, fortune telling, and superstition in an attempt to get out of a bind.
