Mr. Wong assists in search for Mr. Right

After a long search for your perfect match, you’d welcome help — any help — finding him. You’d do nearly anything to speed up your quest.

This was my feeling last week when I found myself at Hong Kong’s Wong Tai Sin Temple. It is famed for the many prayers answered: “What you request is what you get” via a practice called kau cim. The temple is named after Wong Tai Sin, believed by some to be a god who walked upon the earth and had amazing power to heal believers.

My Hong Kong friends walked me through the kau cim process. First, I chose and lit 9 incense sticks and stuck them in the sand. Then, I got a bamboo cylinder containing fortune sticks and knelt before the main altar. Making a wish (“Let me find my perfect match soon”), I shook the cylinder full of numbered sticks until one stick fell out. Mine was number 95.

Needing interpretation, I chose one of the fortune tellers among the many stalls. Telling him my number, he pulled out a playing-card-size paper bearing the same number, on which was printed a story. My friend translated as he spoke.

The essence of the message was that my past was filled with “thin” relationships — not at the depth I longed for. My journey to find my sweetheart had been long and arduous. (It had indeed!) I had a hole in my heart from this lack of fulfilling relationships that needed to be healed before I’d find my true love.

If I made an offering to Wong Tai Sin, “Mr. Wong” as my friend called him, the deity would assist in my healing and subsequent discovery of my soulmate.

How much was the offering? $200 Hong Kong ($25US). I asked my friend if this was a reasonable rate for an offering. She said yes. Not a bad investment, I thought, and paid up.

The soothsayer asked me to write my full name and date of birth on a piece of paper, then lit 3 incense sticks and gave them to me. He instructed me to stand, holding the sticks and bow 3 times toward a statue of Mr. Wong, praying for his help. I then put the sticks in a bowl of sand near the statue.

The fortune teller took my card-sized fortune paper and put it with my name/birthdate paper and said he would burn them. Since my fortune wasn’t positive he didn’t want me to take it with me. But the blessing and burning the paper would remove it from my future.

He made me promise to return with my soon-to-be-found sweetheart to thank Mr. Wong. I promised I would.

I left feeling more hopeful than I have in a while Let’s hope Mr. Wong will help me find Mr. Right.

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Do you want ideas on your search for your Mr. Right? Get your copy of In Search of King Charming: Who Do I Want to Share My Throne?