A Brief Chat About Welcoming the God of Wealth on the Fifth Day of the Lunar New Year

The custom of welcoming the God of Wealth on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year is connected with the legendary Wang Yuanbao. In Records of Strange Tales there is this legend: Emperor Xuanzong once summoned Wang Yuanbao and asked how much private wealth he possessed. He replied: “Permit me to tie a single bolt of silk to one tree on your southern mountains. When the trees of the southern mountains are exhausted, my silk will not yet run out.” Emperor Xuanzong ascended the Hanyuan Hall, looked toward the southern mountains, and saw a white dragon stretching across the range. He asked his attendants, but they all said they saw nothing. He hastily summoned Wang Yuanbao and asked him; Yuanbao said: “I see a white thing lying across the mountain ridge — I cannot make out its shape.” The high ministers around him asked: “Why is it that we cannot see it?” Emperor Xuanzong said: “I have heard that the utmost rich can match the noble. I am the noblest under Heaven; Yuanbao is the richest under Heaven — that is why I can see it.”

It is said that after Wang Yuanbao rose to prosperity, he never forgot the God of Wealth. Therefore at home he enshrined the God of Wealth, and at his shops he worshipped the God of Wealth. He also donated charitable funds in Chang’an to build a temple to the Star Lord of Wealth and Silks, inviting high Daoist masters to preside over offerings through all four seasons, so that incense burned without cease. Moreover, every year on the fifth day of the first month, when his shops opened for business, he would rise early to be the first to offer incense at the temple of the Star Lord of Wealth and Silks. Thus people everywhere followed his example.

Another account holds that in ancient Chang’an, on every fifth-day morning vendors selling “ingot fish” could be found in the streets; shops of all kinds scrambled to buy them, threading the fishes’ spines with string and hanging them from the ceiling beams with the heads facing inward, each fish plastered with a red paper ingot — a way of “inviting wealth and receiving treasure.” Later this custom spread across the country and became the fifth-day custom of worshipping the God of Wealth, together with the God of Wealth touring among the folk to bestow fortune and riches.

The accounts above all describe the origins of the folk customs. The activity of welcoming the God of Wealth on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year formed from a convergence of various factors; and the “five” of the fifth day is primarily a conceptual echo of the “five” in the Five-Direction Gods of Wealth, so for auspiciousness on that day it became linked with them.

Because in legend, under the name of the God of Wealth Zhao Gongming stand four divine officers in charge of matters related to wealth, the Five-Direction Gods of Wealth generally refer to Marshal Zhao Gongming as the central, or middle-path, God of Wealth, with the other four great ones being: Xiao Sheng, Heavenly Venerable of Treasure-Invitation, of the east; Chen Jiugong, Messenger of Wealth-Invitation, of the south; Cao Bao, Heavenly Venerable of Rare-Gathering, of the west; and Yao Shaosi, Immortal Official of Profitable Markets, of the north.

Thus on the fifth day of the first month there is a custom of burning incense toward the five directions separately: to the east one worships Xiao Sheng, to the south Chen Jiugong, in the middle Zhao Gongming, to the west Cao Bao, and to the north Yao Shaosi.

In this system, besides Zhao Gongming, the one with the more formal historical pedigree is the Immortal Official of Profitable Markets, Yao Shaosi. In ancient northern China, during every Spring Festival people pasted images of the Heavenly Official of Profitable Markets on their doors for good luck — especially merchants. This custom can be traced back at least as far as the Song dynasty.

The concept of the Five-Direction Gods of Wealth, however, currently appears earliest in the Ming-dynasty novel Investiture of the Gods; yet that novel itself was compiled from folk legends and customs — most of its content has roots in popular legend and was merely reworked, not wholly invented.

But no matter what, once incense is burned and someone believes and sacrifices, the belief will have its own meaning and effect.

There is also a modern version listing the Five-Direction Gods of Wealth as: Bi Gan for the east, Guan Yu for the west, Lord Chai for the south, Wang Hai for the center, and Zhao Gongming for the north — and yet another variant as: Wang Hai as the center, Fan Li for the southeast, Li Guizu for the northeast, Bai Gui for the northwest, and Duanmu Ci for the southwest.

Taken together, one can see that this actually corresponds to Nine-Direction Gods of Wealth, distributed according to the Nine Palaces:

  Fan Li Lord Chai    Duanmu Ci 

  Bi Gan  Wang Hai  Guan Yu

Li Guizu Zhao Gongming Bai Gui

This distribution has no rigorous logic behind it; it was invented essentially by well-meaning people of modern or near-modern times and carries no strict universality — after all, were things truly ordered this way, it would be hard to justify that Lord Tao Zhu (Fan Li under another name) is not even on the list.

From the standpoint of ritual method, what can truly be called a God of Wealth in the tradition is mainly Marshal Zhao Gongming — relatively speaking the one most grounded in established ritual.

So-called “having a method to follow” means more than a foundation of popular belief and incense; it also requires a clear and definite system of techniques.

For example, in the Secret Methods of Marshal Zhao of the Flying Tiger Commandery of the Orthodox One Xuan Altar, the Ruyi talisman is mentioned, which through summoning the Heavenly Union God Zhang Jie and the Earthly Union God Liu Tong assists in attracting wealth and profitable markets. In other methods, such as the Republican-era manuscript Verse Formula for Enlivening a Shop by Marshal Zhao, the powers summoned for wealth-drawing are Marshal Santian Hehe and the Two Immortals of Harmony and Union.

One can clearly see that in traditional thinking, the realization of wealth-drawing proceeds through the mode of harmony and union — as the saying goes, “harmony begets wealth.” In modern terms, that is: first, increase foot traffic; second, improve conversion rates as far as possible. This captures the essential pain points of ordinary merchants.

However, although ancient Chinese trade was fairly developed, its forms were relatively basic and cannot be compared with modern complex commercial systems. Especially after the rise of the modern financial industry symbolized by banks, which gave rise along the way to a great many new business models, many situations have already changed.

Traditional wealth-drawing logic is relatively more suited to small and medium commercial entities; under loose subjective conditions it can often have greater effect. But as objective conditions grow stricter, the room for ordinary maneuver shrinks ever further, and the effect such methods can achieve is greatly limited — because the entire logic has changed.

Therefore, for the modern commercial sphere, flexible adjustment must be made in light of real conditions in order to produce genuine results. Broadly speaking, there are usually two ways to realize this in practice.

One method is to guide things intentionally according to existing conditions and development direction. The advantage is controllability; the disadvantage, because human knowledge is limited, is that some unexpected opportunities are missed, and if handled poorly the effect is negligible — so unless one clearly understands a merchant’s model and logic, one cannot craft an optimal plan for them.

The other method is to optimize a better path along the current direction of development. The drawback is that it is uncontrollable and the bestowal of blessing has a degree of randomness; the advantage, however, is that one often benefits from unexpected opportunities or from black swan events.

In usual traditional practice, both methods were integrated, with efforts to increase controllability. Because the traditional commercial structure was relatively simple, even rough operations could yield good results. Thus typically one invoked the gods’ blessing through incense, while also employing secret methods: on one hand drawing qi and summoning generals, then letting the spirit generals carry out the corresponding work of harmony, wealth-drawing, and profitable markets — dual safeguards with both channels.

Times have a changing face and also an inherently unchanging one; some things remain the same throughout, while others are constantly changing.

For example, in the wage-employment system — ordinary working people — expecting a dramatic rise in salary is almost impossible, because pay grades are usually fixed by clear regulations; real additional income often comes through other channels. Under such conditions it is clearly not appropriate to work through the “harmony and union” mode; simple temple worship and prayer are more likely to produce unexpected opportunities and income.

Also in ordinary commercial channels: everyone says traffic is needed, but traffic alone is not enough — true conversion units are traffic multiplied by conversion rate, and even that must be multiplied by a profit margin to become real revenue. Sometimes traffic lies in quality, not quantity. Some media for aesthetic medicine, for instance, may look to have a modest audience and not high conversion rates, yet because profits are high enough, overall returns are extremely considerable. In such cases the most efficient optimization is conversion; traditional wealth-drawing methods are exactly suited to this scenario, and so usually yield excellent results.

But when modern enterprises engage in capital operations and need continuous financing for expansion, the strategy often taken is to trade losses for scale first — the speed of scale expansion matters more. Once scale is in place and the territory is secured, they then consider how to further monetize. When the logic of spend-versus-scale-expansion becomes stable, simply injecting more capital converts directly into growth of scale; at such a stage, what a company must consider first is not the profitability question. Under such circumstances, “wealth-drawing” is no longer wealth-drawing in the ordinary sense.

Also in capital mergers and acquisitions or financing, the question of performance-related bet agreements (valuation adjustment mechanisms) sometimes arises. Once such an agreement is signed, its nature falls somewhere between partnership and lending; yet whether it counts as equity partnership or as lending ultimately depends on the outcome afterward.

This is very common but quite strange; matters also become more complicated. After capital is introduced under a bet agreement, capital is usually extremely cautious, so payment is always dragged out in installments; and parties who urgently need funds are typically very short of them. Without capital one cannot get things off the ground at once; without getting started one cannot secure fuller capital support. Many enterprises carelessly become trapped in this cycle.

Breaking out under such conditions is likewise no simple matter of “wealth-drawing,” so more detailed, customized solutions are needed.

All of this is spoken of at a broad level; when one drills down to specific individuals, the situation is even more complex.

Ordinary folk activities of burning incense, worshipping gods, and seeking divine blessing are essentially a brainless all-out push. If the effect were not so random, this would be bluntly effective, free of mental burden, and a form the public happily welcomes and easy to spread.

Once one encounters more complex situations, relying solely on incense and worship is hard to guarantee any certain effect.

For example, among people who burn incense and worship, the more devout are more likely to feel blessed — but this is also partly probabilistic: worship more, and naturally the overall chance of receiving blessing rises.

Obviously, some people are simply very unlucky, like drawing cards, never receiving blessing. The traditional explanation is insufficient affinity or fate; but this is clearly too crude. The deeper reason lies in differing degrees of spiritual affinity between different people and different deities.

Then would enshrining a pile of gods make things better? Clearly not. In folk tradition a vulgar saying holds that if all are enshrined in one place they will start fighting; this claim is rough but has a certain logic: according to the account of incense resources, since offerings are limited, enshrining multiple statues naturally invites contention over resource allocation. The only solution is like in a temple — make offerings separately to each statue, which effectively avoids conflict.

Returning to offerings: ordinary offerings also take different forms. The most common is using material objects as symbolic stand-ins — in practice this usually means burning real-world objects, so that the concept of the corresponding object takes shape within the incense.

Thus many strange modes of offering — burning a paper-made iPhone, and so on — can indeed stand within the incense concept. But these concepts are after all intangible; once they reach the incense they become another measure: how much conversion of willpower-attachment they can achieve.

Once this principle is clear, one understands that offerings need not be concrete physical sacrifices; more importantly, what is needed is a concept of selfless giving so that smooth conversion can occur. Therefore simple offerings — even clear water, or fresh flowers, or mere remembrance joined with hope — can also have their due effect.

Still, most people are probably more concerned with how an ordinary individual can more effectively carry out a ceremony welcoming the God of Wealth, to pray for smoothness in the year ahead. Let me say this briefly.

First, one must have a sufficiently respectful state of mind; one must be calm and peaceful, and the mind must quiet down, for it is then easier to produce good resonance. Second, if one is a true local by birth, and local customs impose requirements or particular practices, one should follow local custom as far as possible. Finally, how much incense is burned or how much spirit money is offered is not most important; sincerity of heart is the key. One should trust one’s own feeling — when it feels about right, there is no need to press on through force.

For ordinary people these are the key points; there is no need to be unconventional or insist on being different from everyone else. For the clever, without needing many fine details, one should be able to grasp directly the deeper meaning of the simple words above.