For Some Chinese, Success in Life Is A Name Change Away
When Li Jun asked a feng shui master last March for tips on how to make his new investment consultancy in Beijing successful, he got a quick answer: Change your name.
"Jun," which is Mandarin for "handsome," would not help his career, the master determined. Instead, he suggested Mr. Li call himself "Jianming," which means "establishing a bright future."
Mr. Li immediately started using the name Li Jianming in all his social and business dealings. Ever since, his business has been growing. His staff has expanded to more than 20 from just a handful in less than a year. Mr. Li attributes his success to his new name. "I will do whatever the master says can bring better luck to my business," says Mr. Li.
Name changes such as Mr. Li's are increasingly common in China amid a business boom and a resurgence of feng shui. An ancient Chinese art, feng shui aims to help people achieve health, prosperity and harmony through the layout of buildings, the arrangement of furniture and the bestowing of names with good omen.
Shortly after Mr. Li changed his name, his wife changed hers. Later in the year, three of his close friends did the same. Though no official records exist, Chinese scholars believe that more than a million people in China have changed their given names in recent years.
The number of feng shui masters specializing in changing names also has increased rapidly. A street outside Yonghe Gong, a Tibetan Buddhist temple in central Beijing, is lined with dozens of shops that offer help with name changes. Less than a decade ago, there was just one.
Thousands of Web sites are dedicated to finding names for newborns and adults. In chat groups, Chinese discuss which names are good and which are bad. People can even use their cellphones to send a text message containing their name to a feng shui consultancy. Seconds later, they receive a text message saying whether the name is "auspicious" or "ominous" or a mixture of the two.
Name changes have gained popularity as the country's political climate eased over the past decade. Many name changers are driven by a desire to reconnect with China's rich pre-Communist history, when feng shui-blessed names were popular and superstition about names was prevalent in all parts of society, from emperors to farmers.
Today, name changes are especially popular among the country's new business elite. Entrepreneurs believe a new given name offers a chance to start a new chapter in life. Moreover, a new name is seen as an expression of personal freedom, at a time when individualism is on the rise.
Amid rapid change in Chinese society, people are feeling less secure, says Xu Anqi, a sociologist at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. "Naturally, some people will look for luck," she says.
Consultations to find the right name can cost between $10 and $300, or higher, a large sum considering hundreds of millions of Chinese still make less than $5 a day. But many people can turn to the Internet for a free evaluation.
For years, feng shui was banned by the Communist Party. As a result, many Chinese born after 1949 were given names that did not heed feng shui rules. Instead, names often echoed political events, such as "Wenge" (Cultural Revolution) if a person was born in 1966 when the political upheaval started, or "Changjiang" (Yangtze River) if a person was born during one of the many times Mao Tse-tung swam across the big river between 1956 and 1966. Many women have "hong" (red) as their given names -- the color that symbolizes the new China and the Communist Party.
Though the ban on feng shui is no longer enforced, most name changes are not made officially. It's legal to change one's name, but China's government cautions people against doing it. A state-run newspaper spelled out all the complications in an article last month, noting that after an official name change one still has to change the names on such things as real-estate documents, insurance forms and banking accounts. Meanwhile, local police stations often reject requests for name changes. In principle, police say, they only consider requests from children whose parents are divorced and adults whose names contain rare or difficult-to-pronounce characters.
Frustration with the official process is a frequent topic in Internet chat groups. "Forget it," one person recently told people interested in going through the red tape, in a discussion on Baidu.com, one of China's largest Internet portals. Another had this advice: "Bribe your local police chief with two cartons of cigarettes."
Feng shui masters say that names in official records don't matter that much anyway. They tell clients to simply encourage their families, friends and every new acquaintance to call them by the new name. They also advise clients to buy a jade stamp engraved with the new name, as a symbol of the change.
Composing a name is an art without hard and fast rules, feng shui masters say. The masters generally weigh a client's balance of yin and yang and count the number of strokes in the characters of an existing given name. Success is a matter of finding a name that balances the inner forces in a person to help them have a better destiny, they say.
Not everybody sticks with a new name. Li Lin, an insurance executive in Beijing, stopped using her new name not long after she adopted it. "It didn't sound as good as my original name," she says. "And it was a bit confusing for people around me."
But stories of success continue to fuel the trend. Chen Mingjian changed his given name in 1998, after he was fired from an investment consultancy he co-founded. A feng shui master said Mr. Chen's original given name, Jian, or "healthy," attracted money and success but mainly for his employers, not for himself. The name Mingjian, which means "understanding the key point," would give him a better chance at earning a personal fortune, the master said.
Mr. Chen now owns HollyHigh International Capital Co., a mergers-and-acquisitions consultancy with offices in Beijing and Shanghai. "Name changing...gives you psychological assurance in difficult times," says Mr. Chen. "My career didn't take off until I changed my name."
Mr. Chen says eight of 32 of his classmates from prestigious Tsinghua University, most of them bankers and investment bankers, have followed his example and changed their names in recent years.
"I may change my name again if there are dramatic changes in my life," says Mr. Chen.
好名字带来好风水
去年3月，李俊向一位风水大师询问如何才能让其新设立的投资咨询公司成功时，大师给了他一个速效的解决办法：改名。
大师说，“俊”在中文中是“俊俏”的意思，对其事业没有帮助。他建议李俊改名“建明”，意味著“建立光明的未来”。
李俊立即采纳了这个建议，在所有的社交和商务活动中都采用了“李建明”这个名字。自那以后，他的业务不断发展。员工人数已从不到一年前的屈指可数的几个增加到了20多人。李建明将自己的成功归因于新名字，并说：“只要大师说什么能有益于我的公司，我都会去做。”
像李俊这样改名的事情，在如今商业繁荣发展的中国日益普遍，古老的中国风水术又开始兴起。风水通过调整建筑布局、家具摆放以及取名等方式，希望能帮助人们身体健康、事业发达、家庭和谐等等。
李俊改名后不久，他的妻子也改了名字。去年晚些时候，他有三个好朋友也改名了。虽然没有这方面的官方记录，中国学者相信近年来有100万中国人改了出生时的名字。
专门从事改名行业的风水大师的数量也在迅速增长。在北京藏传佛教的庙宇雍和宫外的一条街上，有十几家店提供改名服务。而不到10年前，这儿只有一家这样的店。
有几千家网站专门从事新生儿取名和成人改名业务。在互联网聊天组中，中国人讨论哪些名字好，哪些名字不好。人们甚至将自己的名字编入手机短信息，发送给风水大师征求意见。几秒后，他们就会收到短信息回复，说明这个名字能带来“好运气”还是“坏运气”，抑或有好有坏。
近十年来，随著中国政治气氛的宽松，改名也日益流行。许多人改名是希望与共产党政府之前的古老历史重新联系起来：以前，人们取名都很注意风水大师的建议，上至皇帝，下至贩夫，整个社会都对名字很迷信。
如今，改名在中国的商界新贵中尤为盛行。企业家们相信一个新的名字能掀开生命中新的一章。而且，一个新的名字也被视为在个人主义逐步上升的时代、个人自由的一种表示。
在中国社会快速发展的过程中，人们的安全感下降了。上海社科院社会学研究员徐安琪表示，“很自然，一些人就会寄希望于好运。”
咨询取名的费用在10美元到300美元不等，甚至会更高，考虑到几亿中国人每天的收入仍不到5美元，这样的收费是很昂贵的。但许多人会上网寻找免费估名服务。
多年来，风水一直被中国共产党政府所禁止。因此，许多1949年以后出生的中国人取名时并不注重风水之说。很多名字都带有鲜明的政治色彩，比如，出生在1966年文化大革命爆发时的很多人就取名为“文革”，而出生在1956年至1966年毛泽东多次横渡长江时的很多人就取名“长江”。许多女性的名字中都有“红”这个字，因为这个颜色象征著新中国以及共产党。
虽然如今政府已不再明令禁止风水说，但大多数人都属于私下改名。的确，法律允许人们改名，但中国政府提醒人们最好不要这样做。一家官方报纸上个月的文章详细指出了改名带来的种种麻烦，一个人正式更名后还要更改房产证、保险单、银行存折等文件上的名字。户籍机关也往往会拒绝改名申请。警方表示，原则上他们只考虑父母离婚后小孩的改名，以及名字中有生僻字或难发音字的成人改名。
在互联网聊天组中，常常能听到对官方程序的不满。在中国最大的门户网站之一百度(Baidu.com)的一个聊天组中，最近的一次讨论中，有人表示打算通过户籍机关改名，立刻就有人告诫称，“还是别想了。”还有人则给出了这样的建议：“给公安局长送两条好烟吧。”
风水大师称，户口本中的名字并不那么重要。他们告诉客户只要鼓励家人、朋友以及每个新认识的人用新名字称呼他们就可以了。他们还建议客户买一个玉质印章，刻上新名字，作为改名的象征。
风水大师说，取名是一门艺术，没有定法，也没有速成之道。大师们通常会根据客户的生辰八字，并计算现有名字的笔划。一个好名字能平衡一个人内在的阴阳力量，改变其命运。
并非所有人都能坚持使用新的名字。北京一家保险公司的管理人员李琳（音）在改名后不久就停用了新名字。“听起来还不如我原来的名字，”她说，“而且，对周围人来说有点搞不清。”
但一些成功的故事让改名潮热度不减。陈明键1998年从联手创建的投资咨询公司被解雇后改了名字。一个风水大师说，陈明键原来的名字“健”引来了财富和成功，但这些运气主要到了其雇主那里，不是他本人受益。新的名字“明键”意味著“看清关键”，能有助于他个人成功。
陈明键现在拥有并购咨询公司东方高圣投资顾问公司(HollyHigh International Capital Co.)，在北京和上海都有办事处。“改名在困难时期给了你一种心理上的肯定，”陈明键表示，“我的事业在改名后发展很快。”
陈明键称，他在清华大学时的32个同学大多从事银行和投资银行业，其中有8个人近年来也仿效他改了名字。
“如果我的生活中出现了重大转变，我可能还会改名，”陈明键称。
