The story about us

The name GuanXiang comes from the Chinese phrase 观象授时—“observe the signs and determine the time.” It means looking carefully at visible events and celestial patterns, understanding the conditions around you, and then choosing an appropriate moment to act.

This is also close to the original purpose of the I Ching. The I Ching grew from generations of observation in ancient China: the movement of the sky, the form of the land, the natural environment, and the course of human affairs. Over time, people classified what they saw, identified recurring patterns, and shaped those patterns into a coherent philosophy of action. Across several thousand years, this system continued to develop and become more complete. It offered ways to study astronomy, geography, the natural environment, human relationships, self-knowledge, and self-discovery. These were not separate interests. Together, they formed a basis for deciding how to act within changing conditions. Its way of thinking has run through almost the entire history of East Asian culture, and the text came to be regarded as the first among the Chinese classics.

There is no question that the I Ching is a complex subject. GuanXiang has spent more than two years working through its terminology, theories, symbols, and underlying logic, then presenting them in the simplest and most direct way we can. We do not hide the method or hold back essential information.

We know this approach may be criticized by people who believe the subject should remain difficult, exclusive, or dependent on a recognized master. Even so, we believe this work matters. It is an opportunity to remove the superstitious covering that has accumulated around the I Ching and to let people see what it actually is.

That purpose gave rise to GuanXiang and to our character: a fashionable young man with an earring, purple hair, an iced Americano, and traditional Chinese clothing. The contrast is intentional. GuanXiang is a studio for pattern reading and traditional culture study. It is not a service for fortune-telling, changing luck, or predicting a fixed destiny.

We oppose superstition, fatalism, the deification of a method, and blind devotion to masters. Through the learning materials on GuanXiang, we believe anyone can become their own master. Anyone can learn to use this Eastern philosophy to make sense of reality, understand the surrounding environment, and understand themselves. Our hope is that this practical clarity helps people move beyond anxiety and confusion, and become more confident and open-minded in everyday life.

The I Ching has often been taught in a divided way. One side presents it as a set of grand moral principles and abstract lessons. The other side reduces it entirely to divination and prediction. We believe this separation goes against the original character of the I Ching.

In GuanXiang Hexalogos, we try not to abandon either side. We bring philosophy and method back together so that the underlying logic can be seen honestly. Hexalogos is only our first goal. It focuses on yin and yang, the eight trigrams, and the Six Lines method—the most fundamental parts of the I Ching and among the most practical places to begin.

In the future, we plan to bring other methods into GuanXiang as well. Our aim is not to make an ancient subject look mysterious. It is to help this old and profound field become genuinely useful to the people who need it.

We introduce you to the I Ching as a mirror. It can help you see yourself more clearly, but it can also help you see the environment around you. It creates a bridge between your inner world and the conditions you are living in.

What you do with that understanding is your decision. How you use it to create your own story, and how you write the life that belongs to you, will always remain in your hands.

This is a real regret for me. We know that many people who use other languages are also deeply interested in the I Ching. At this stage, however, I cannot guarantee the precision of additional language editions. Ordinary translation—and especially unchecked AI translation—can create serious differences in meaning when the subject is already this exact and layered.

For that reason, we currently provide GuanXiang in English only. As the project continues to improve, I hope we can gradually support more languages and make the material available to more people who need it.

We are grateful to every person who chooses to learn with GuanXiang. Let us begin this mysterious and beautiful journey together—and become people who can meet life with clarity, confidence, and a light of our own.

I was born into a family with a living tradition of I Ching study, so I encountered it from childhood. Yet during the first half of my life, I never worked in a field related to the I Ching. It remained a serious personal interest—something I continued to study and research over many years. In my spare time, I also explored Western astrology and tarot. They gave me many questions about the differences and connections between these traditions, and I often wanted to record and share what I had learned. Work was demanding, however, and I never turned that intention into something real.

My education and career may not match the usual image people have of someone who studies the I Ching. I studied science in high school and earned admission, with strong results, to one of China’s leading universities, where I studied economics and law. After graduation, I worked in finance for more than ten years and built a successful career. I never imagined that one day I would have the time to turn my private study and experience into a website for anyone who was interested.

Many people begin exploring astrology or tarot because they feel uncertain about life, troubled by a situation, eager to understand themselves, or afraid of what they cannot yet see. My experience was not so different. Through the I Ching, I learned to see myself more clearly: my professional inclinations, my relationships, and the different stages of my life. I learned how to make choices, how to let go, and how to think about society and human life with more perspective.

More than once, I wanted to do what I could to share this culture with people around the world. For a long time, I did not have enough courage or enough time to begin.

Three years ago, during a trip to California, I met Olivia, who was deeply interested in Chinese I Ching culture. She had been trying to learn through materials she found online. Most original sources available to her were difficult classical Chinese texts, while many secondary explanations were inconsistent, unreliable, or openly contradictory. She cared about the subject, but she had no clear way to continue learning it in depth.

When she learned that I came from a family with an I Ching tradition, we talked for a long time. I was genuinely moved to see that people far beyond China were paying close attention to this part of Eastern culture. After I returned home, we stayed in contact. Olivia continued to encourage me to turn what I knew into a website or an app so more people could study it in a structured way.

I spent a great deal of time thinking and struggling before I started GuanXiang. I knew how difficult it would be to complete work of this scale through my own effort. There were many obstacles, and even the question of where to begin felt overwhelming. At the same time, my existing work was still demanding. For years, beginning the project did not feel realistic.

In the second half of 2024, I left my career in finance and finally had more time. With the support of Teacher Yifang, I made the formal decision to begin GuanXiang.

Teacher Yifang is one of China’s best-known I Ching teachers. Her free public course on the Six Lines method has served as an introduction for a very large number of Chinese learners and has become widely known and shared. When I told her what I hoped to create, she immediately gave me strong support. Her response strengthened my resolve to build the website properly.

Building GuanXiang involved more difficulty than I had expected. Our work has never been limited to translating classical texts into English. We also had to decide how to organize the knowledge into a progressive path—one that ordinary readers could understand and put into use without years of preliminary study. That required a great deal of time, labor, and material support.

We did not rely on untrustworthy sources, and we did not bring in outside investment. Every paragraph and every image now visible on GuanXiang has passed through more than two years of repeated thought and discussion, with roughly ten versions of revision in many cases.

To help beginners understand, learn, and use the material more quickly, we used decades of practical experience to train our own AI-assisted system. The point was not to let a general-purpose model interpret the I Ching for us. It was to prevent the familiar problems of generic AI interpretation: excessive empty language, moral lectures, and statements that sound convincing without saying anything precise. The method, standards, and judgment behind the material remain ours.

GuanXiang now contains close to one million words of written material. It is among the most comprehensive I Ching websites currently available online. Even so, it is not complete. There are still many subjects to refine, many explanations to improve, and many areas to add.

I hope GuanXiang can serve as a progressive starting point: a place where more people can understand the I Ching, become familiar with Eastern systems of observation, and eventually turn this knowledge into an action philosophy that is genuinely useful in their own lives. I will continue to update the site and keep adding material that is new, practical, and worth learning.