In the spring of 1976, veteran Asia correspondent Tiziano Terzani consulted a Chinese fortune-teller in Hong Kong. "Beware!" the old man said. "You run a grave risk of dying in 1993. You mustn't fly that year. Don't fly. Not even once."
When 1993 arrived, the Der Spiegel reporter decided that the best way of confronting the prophecy was the Asian one: not to fight against it, but to submit. He persuaded his employers to allow him to avoid air travel for the year.
Thus it was that on March 20th, 1993, he gave up his place on a UN helicopter carrying 15 European journalists on assignment in Cambodia to a colleague, Joachim Holzgen. The helicopter crashed, badly injuring several passengers, including Holzgen, who sustained a broken leg and a suppressed spinal chord.
This story, related in a travel book by Terzani, A Fortune-Teller Told Me (Flamingo, 1998) and currently a best-seller in Hong Kong, may give pause to Western critics of the soothsayers and shamans who dictate so many aspects of life in Asian cultures.
Hong Kong, where Terzani found his fortune-teller, is the most westernised city in the Orient, but much of personal and commercial life is dominated by respect for omens and portents. How else to explain the commotion caused on Saturday by the arrival of one of the most significant visitors to the territory in recent memory - the Buddha's tooth? The sacred tooth, reputed to have survived the funeral pyre of Gautama Buddha 2,500 years ago, is associated with good luck. A public holiday was proclaimed and more than 1,000 people were at the airport to welcome the relic's arrival on a chartered flight from Beijing, where it is kept. It was placed in an ornate golden tabernacle and driven on a lorry decorated as a giant lotus flower to the Hong Kong Coliseum for a week-long display.
The timing of the tooth's visit was especially auspicious as it coincided with the 2,543rd birthday of the Buddha on Saturday. Many devotees believe its arrival in Hong Kong will help bring peace, stability and prosperity to the former British colony. And not before time. Hong Kong has had a wretched run of luck in the last two years, what with floods, pestilence, and the Asian economic crisis. People remember that in the 1960s, a run of calamities at the Hong Kong Jockey Club, including the death of a jockey, was ended only by a four-day Buddhist service of exorcism.
Believers in manipulating fate and fortune include not just monks and holy people, but stock market traders and property dealers. Clothing tycoon Mr Charles Yeung, a leading pro-Beijing politician and a devout Buddhist, said once: "Yes, I am lucky - which in Hong Kong matters more than anything else. But you have to ask yourself why that is, and that's where religion comes in. Good fortune simply reflects good works done in a previous life."
Taoism and Confucianism also play important roles in business enhancement. Every year, millions of Hong Kong people consult fortune sticks in the Taoist temple of Wong Tai Sin in Kowloon, the oracle of fortune-telling. Here the way the bamboo sticks fall from a container known as the chim is interpreted by soothsayers, and usually acted upon by the clients.
Every year tens of thousands of people "borrow" huge sums of artificial lucky money at Hong Kong temples from Kuan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, believing the exercise will bring good fortune in financial transactions. Some will travel further afield to enhance their lives. Socialites in Hong Kong make regular daytrips to Bangkok to pray to the famous four-face Buddha - conveniently located beside the Grand Hyatt Hotel - which is reputed to grant wishes to beautiful women and is popular with Hong Kong actresses and starlets praying for fame and fortune.
Side by side in Hong Kong with some of the world's most modern architecture exist powerful traditional beliefs such as Feng Shui. The location of the city's steel and glass towers and sophisticated shopping malls are almost always the result of consultation with Feng Shui experts, hired by developers to make sure they do not disturb the spirits. Doors, windows and even desk-top computers are placed in the most auspicious locations to prevent bad luck. And at their desks some Hong Kong corporate executives regularly turn to the Chinese almanac, Tung Sing, and will delay concluding a deal if the book says it is not an auspicious day.
And who is to say they are wrong, that the occult, if not a certainty, may not contain a possibility? When the soothsayer told the Der Spiegel correspondent not to fly in 1993, he had the wisdom to listen. His unfortunate colleague's first words when he spoke to Terzani from his hospital bed after the helicopter crash were: "To hell with you and your fortune-teller. He was right, damn it."