Cast & Chart

Guan Di lot 72 of 100

The sun is already in the west

Lowest (下下, 辛乙). Grades differ between editions, and many Taiwanese temples print none. Shown as Wikisource gives it. Wikisource prints no stem pair for this lot, so 辛乙 is from manekineko.com.tw.

河渠傍路有高低

可歎長途日已西

縱有榮華好時節

直須猴犬換金雞

The channels and the road have highs and lows.

How sad it is to see the long road with the sun already in the west.

Even if a good season of glory comes,

you must wait for the monkey and the dog to be replaced by the golden rooster.

What this lot says

This is a lot about long journeys and late timing. The verse says the road has ups and downs, that the day is late, and that glory comes only when the year turns.

The animals refer to years, so the lot names a time and not a promise. It suits a question about patience in a long project.

A lot is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.

The story behind it

Fan Li returns to the lake (范蠡歸湖)

According to the account on Wikisource, Fan Li of the Spring and Autumn period helped the King of Yue defeat Wu, then left office because he judged the king could share hardship but not comfort. He sailed away, grew wealthy again as a merchant, and moved three times.

Source: Wikisource, 關聖帝君靈籤/72, the 故事及記載 section

Where this text comes from

This verse is a traditional temple text with no known author. We read it from two named web transcriptions, Chinese Wikisource (the base text) and manekineko.com.tw. Neither is a scan of a printing, the edition behind them is mixed, and we could not establish whether the two are independent of each other.

Wikisource (關聖帝君靈籤) (the text shown above)

河渠傍路有高低 / 可歎長途日已西 / 縱有榮華好時節 / 直須猴犬換金雞

Retrieved 2026-11-09. Transcription licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

manekineko.com.tw (富貴轉運站)

河渠傍路有高低 / 可歎長途日山西 / 縱有榮華好時節 / 直須猴犬換金雞

Retrieved 2026-11-09

Where the sources differ

  • Line 2 reads 可歎長途日已西 in Wikisource and 可歎長途日山西 on manekineko.com.tw. We show the Wikisource reading.

English translation, meaning and story summaries are by Cast & Chart.