問籤閣 · Poem lookup

Kau Cim — Chinese Fortune Sticks

Also known as kau cim, chien tung, or fortune sticks — the oracle practice you may have encountered at temples in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Southeast Asia. You shake a cylinder of numbered sticks until one falls out. Each number corresponds to a poem that speaks to your situation.

What makes this different

• Verifiable randomness. Before you draw, we publish a cryptographic commitment hash. After you draw, we reveal the seed. Anyone can recalculate and confirm the result wasn't tampered with. How verification works →
• Edition-level source attribution. The same poem exists in multiple temple editions. We document which edition each text comes from, with per-poem variant tracking. See edition comparison →
• Not fortune-telling. This is a cultural practice and a reflection tool. The poems describe situations, not predictions. We don't claim any predictive accuracy, and we don't offer remedies, blessings, or luck-changing services for money.

How to use it

1. Draw a stick — enter a question, shake, and one stick rises from the tube.
2. Read the poem (in classical Chinese) with our structured interpretation: per-line imagery, 15 traditional category verdicts, suggested actions.
3. Got a stick from a temple? Paste any line of the poem (Chinese characters) and we'll tell you which set it belongs to and which edition it's from.
4. Every draw has a public verification page where you can check the math yourself.

What we don't do

• No predictions, no fortune-telling claims, no accuracy promises.
• No online incense, virtual offerings, or donation buttons.
• No luck-changing, curse-removal, or "negative energy cleansing" paid services.
• No data collection on what you ask — your question text never touches our servers.

Cultural context

Kau Cim (求籤) has been practiced in Chinese temples for centuries. The poems are classical Chinese verse, typically four lines of seven characters. Different temples use different poem sets — the same "lot 37" at two temples may be entirely different poems. That's why we track editions and variants rather than presenting a single "authoritative" text.

The interface, interpretations, and this page are in Chinese. The core texts are classical Chinese poems — translating them accurately is a scholarly task we don't take lightly. If you're interested in the data itself, our B2B API provides structured access.

This platform provides a cultural experience and a reflection tool. It does not provide medical, legal, financial, psychological, or safety advice, and does not predict the future.