Finding fate as an astrologer

[Photo/China Daily]

What is your notion of an astrologer? A woman wearing long medieval robe holding a leather - covered book? A balding middle - aged man with wispy beard?

Shen Lei breaks the archetype image. The place she usually meets customers - Starbucks - further dispels any perceptions about the mystery of her work.

After resigning from an administrative job at a State - owned enterprise in 2011, Shen took up the profession and started offering astrology consultation, predicting a person's fate according to their birth date, place they were born and the mystic power that links them with the stars.

Like most of her colleagues, Shen uses modern technology, in her case an iPad, to do her job. An app will draw the astrological charts for her client, and the material used to analyze personal characteristics and lucky periods.

Her customers range from white - collar workers hoping to know more about their prospects to college students hesitating about different job offers or young ladies in search of marriage.

One of them, Qian Bing, felt almost overwhelmed by two job offers. But Shen refused to make any decision for her.

"That's not the job of an astrologist," she said. Instead, she analyzed Qian's chart and concluded she would take a profession "writing something that shares fresh experiences with others".

That coincided with Qian's experience as a correspondent for a college journal and her love for writing. She is now an editor for the leisure page of a magazine, with which she is quite happy.

Jiang Ying, another astrologist and founder of the training institution Ruodao Astrology, agreed the job is not about making life decisions for people.