In any case, Ms. Hu said she did not take horoscopes that seriously. “It’s just something to read everyday when I’m bored on the subway,” she said, adding that they certainly they did not influence her life decisions.

Well, that is, with one exception.

“Oh, I would never date a Cancer,” Ms. Hu said adamantly. “They might be good family men but most of the Cancer guys I know dabble outside their marriage. It’s really bad.”

Over the centuries, China developed a set of sophisticated divination techniques for use within and outside the imperial court. Today, many Chinese still consult fate-calculating practices like bazi, which determines a person’s fortune based on birth year, month, date and hour.

And the traditional Chinese zodiac, which features 12 animals representing 12 years, is so widely referenced that in 2014, several provinces reported a spike in births among young couples hoping to have their babies in the last weeks of the auspicious Year of the Horse to avoid the less favorable Year of the Sheep.

China is, of course, not the only place where interest in the occult thrives. A survey by the National Science Foundation, published in 2014, found that in recent years the number of Americans who said they believed that astrology was “sort of scientific” or “very scientific” was on the rise.

The difference in China is the visibility of the phenomenon. Unlike in America, there is little embarrassment about believing in Western astrology. Determining your fortune based on the interaction between the sun, the stars and the planets is just what Chinese have been doing for hundreds of years.

At the root of Western astrology’s popularity, some astrologers say, is a growing thirst for spiritual guidance.