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The story behind YUBAO
Three thousand years, three stories. They explain the name, the method, and the small line that sits at the bottom of every card we make.
宝
King Wen, in prison
Tradition holds that King Wen worked out the judgements for the sixty-four hexagrams while he was imprisoned by the Shang. He had time, and no freedom, and he turned the figures into something a person could think with.
Whatever the history, that is the tone of the method: written by someone waiting, for people who are waiting.
Shao Yong and the plum branch
Centuries later, Shao Yong is said to have read a moment from a sparrow falling off a plum branch — the time, the branch, the bird, the two people talking. Meihua Yishu, Plum Blossom Numerology, takes its name from that story.
It gave us the method we use here: the numbers already present in the moment you ask.
Why a fish, and why treasure
The name YUBAO is 鱼宝 — the fish's treasure. The line we print under every reading is: “I am the treasure you lost in your past life.”
It is a small piece of Chinese folk storytelling — the thing you are looking for was always yours, and you are the one who misplaced it. That is the whole promise of a mirror: it returns nothing you did not already have.
What we take from all this
A method born in a cell, another found in a plum tree, and a fish holding a treasure. None of it promises to tell you your future. All of it was built to help someone get through a wait.
Try it tonight
The story is the product: one question, one casting, read plainly back to you.
Ask the oracleQuestions people ask
Who wrote the I Ching?
Nobody knows, and it was plainly written by many hands over centuries. The traditional attributions — King Wen for the judgements, the Duke of Zhou for the line texts — are part of how the book was carried, not a documented authorship.
Why is it called Plum Blossom Numerology?
From Shao Yong's story of reading a moment from a sparrow and a plum branch. The name stayed.
What does YUBAO mean?
鱼宝 — the fish's treasure. It comes with the line we print on every card: I am the treasure you lost in your past life.
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Last updated 2 November 2026
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