At the foot of  Wudang mountain, in Wudangshan Town (武当山镇, also called Taihe Town 太和镇) very close to the Wudang Mt. ticket office one can find this fancy I Ching consultation business.

Right when you step in you will enter one big room with a woman sitting in the far right corner, in another room (a smaller one) to the left you will find a man in his early 30-ies.

I asked him in broken Chinese if he offers I Ching consultations, he sad yes, I asked how much he charges for consultations, he said 1800 RMB ($347.24 CAD).

A week later my wife (who is Chinese) asked the same question (because I thought maybe I did not understand his response properly) and she was told that the fee is 1000 RMB and up. I think she spoke with the lady in the first room who told her that the person who is doing I Ching consultations is a blind (?!) old man. I am not quite sure how a blind man can consult I Ching but according to my wife that is what the woman in this building told her.

This is a very busy tourist spot so the price is inflated however my impression is that any similar business (apart from the street-level fortune tellers) would charge significant amount for I Ching consultations regardless of their location.

On Wudang Mt. I spoke with a local man who was using the Yi Jing regularly, he even showed my his record of readings for the past several months/years. He never heard of Yarrow stalks (shi cao 蓍草) as a tool for casting hexagrams, he said this is an ancient method that is not used today, he said he uses three coins exclusively.

From his records it was clear he was using Wén Wáng Guà 文王卦 method to interpret the received hexagrams. He even showed my an old book from which he learned how to use Wén Wáng Guà 文王卦 in I Ching divination.

I told him I would appreciate if he could connect me with one of the Wudang Daoist monks who is using the Yi, he said he knew one, but later it turned out that person was martial arts expert, not the Yi Jing expert.

My impression was that the Yi Jing (as a divination tool) is still a taboo in China, seen as a serious superstition by the ruling class and their media machine. Ordinary people will be very unlikely to admit to you that they use I Ching for divination purposes.

Several days later I went to the National Museum of China to see one of their permanent exhibitions - Ancient China and interestingly enough in one corner they displayed all Classical books from pre-Han period EXCEPT the Yi Jing. One would almost think there is someone shadow-banning the Yi jing from the ordinary people's consciousnesses.