The investment circle obsessed with metaphysics has suffered a huge shock: Guan Yu idols are taken down, fortune-telling is banned, and even compiling family trees is deemed a violation of regulations?

Feng shui and financial reports have become the "required courses" for GPs. In the current difficult fundraising environment, GPs do not dare to treat this lightly. As a result, consulting feng shui, placing compasses, and worshipping Guan Gong have become a tacitly accepted "business development posture" for some institutions. If this is just "seeking good luck", the subsequent operations will go far beyond common sense.

Feng shui and financial reports have become the "required courses" for GPs. 

A founding partner of a PE institution based in Shenzhen recently moved to a new office space. He took a fancy to a 300-square-meter office with two large glass windows, one facing the river and the other overlooking the lake. But after a feng shui master did the calculation, he finally changed to another office with only one glass window — "the previous one is not suitable for investment business." 

A partner of an institution in South China put it more bluntly:

"Especially when raising funds from individual LPs, there are indeed many particular rules to follow. We have heard of cases where LPs turn around and leave immediately after finding the feng shui of the office is not suitable when they visit the site." 

In the current difficult fundraising environment, GPs do not dare to treat this lightly. As a result, consulting feng shui, placing compasses, and worshipping Guan Gong have become a tacitly accepted "business development posture" for some institutions. 

If this is just "seeking good luck", the subsequent operations will go far beyond common sense. 

1. No in-person meeting, no due diligence, transfer the funds once the eight characters of birth match

In 2017, Roger Luo, the founder of unmanned convenience station "Magic House", was in the process of fundraising. IDG visited the company three times but did not invest, and other VCs generally adopted a wait-and-see attitude. At this time, Tang Shaoqi, the founder of Blue Mountain Venture Capital, added his WeChat. After discussing the project, he threw out a question: "Send me your eight characters of birth." (According to a report by ifeng.com Tech on April 11, 2018, "Investment is also mysterious: Feng Shui, Yin and Yang, Eight Trigrams, There Is Always One That Suits You") 

Roger Luo was a little confused, thinking that Tang wanted to know his age, so he reported it truthfully. What he didn't know was that Tang Shaoqi immediately turned to an I Ching consultant for divination. The hexagram showed: "This person is about to advance by leaps and bounds and achieve great success! Invest immediately!" 

The next day, Tang Shaoqi expressed his intention to invest. In less than three days, millions of funds were transferred to the account. 

During the whole process, the two parties never met, the investor never visited the company, and did not request any due diligence materials.

Tang Shaoqi calls this set of procedures his own investment methodology: first collect the eight characters of birth of the founder, ask an I Ching consultant to calculate the fortune, then decide whether to communicate with the founder in person, and finally transfer the funds. The shortest time to finalize an investment is only one day. 

One entrepreneur said frankly that he had been asked for his eight characters of birth by two institutions, but he ignored them. He thought that what this practice revealed was not the belief in metaphysics, but that "the investment logic itself was no longer tenable". 

Even LPs (capital contributors) cannot escape the dominance of metaphysics. A founding partner with excellent performance in the military industry recalled that when a fund was about to complete its fundraising, a capital contributor suddenly called and said he could not invest. The reason? "The LP said his master calculated that a certain project he intended to invest in was 'incompatible' with him, and he would lose money." 

2. Metaphysics is not limited to offices, it is a business on its own

What is even more surreal is that the fortune-telling business itself has become a target that the venture capital circle is willing to bet on. 

A We Media company in Zhuhai that focuses on feng shui and numerology content received angel round financing in 2017, and completed a nearly 10 million yuan Pre-A round the following year, with the capital coming from several formal market-oriented funds. A startup that focuses on "AI fortune telling" has also emerged in Beijing, which has made the eight characters of birth calculation into a mini-program, and has also obtained institutional financing. 

A group of people who manage money rely on data models and due diligence reports for a living, but at the same time invest real money in companies that tell "fortune-telling" stories. This is probably the most darkly humorous side of this industry. 

Some insiders sighed: "Nowadays no one goes to Yonghegong Lama Temple anymore, everyone pays for a master to do fortune telling." Even some institutional partners study the Zhou Yi more carefully than they study financial reports. 

3. Regulators step in: Remove Guan Gong statues, ban fortune-telling, and revising family trees is also deemed non-compliant

When "metaphysics" has penetrated every link of fundraising, investment, management and exit, the regulators have finally stepped in. 

Shenzhen took the lead. Last May, the Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau issued the "Circular on the Regulation of Private Equity in Shenzhen", targeting many chaotic phenomena in the private equity industry. The circular clearly mentioned that a securities private equity institution shared office space with 4 affiliated companies, no manager signboard was hung in the office, and many personnel on site were engaged in businesses unrelated to private equity management such as I Ching fortune-telling, knowledge payment, and family tree revision. 

At the same time, the Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau launched the 2026 compliance self-inspection work for private equities under its jurisdiction. Among the 45 verification items in the self-inspection working papers, there is a prominent item: "Whether unrelated businesses such as fortune-telling and family tree revision are carried out in the office premises." 

From Hubei to Shenzhen, from Ningbo to Qingdao, at least 17 securities regulatory bureaus have successively issued self-inspection notices for private equity managers in their jurisdictions so far. The scope of self-inspection includes the compliance of shareholder capital contribution, the situation of managers engaging in unrelated or conflicting businesses, the situation of affiliated parties, etc. Among them, the "summary table of employees' large-value investments" and "investment situation table of products with more than 2 layers of nesting" are newly added contents. 

According to the requirements, for managers who fail to conduct self-inspection as required, submit false materials, or deliberately conceal problems, the regulators will notify the Asset Management Association of China to suggest suspending the filing of new products, and take measures such as interviews and on-site inspections in accordance with the law depending on the circumstances. 

From the 2016 round of rectification that cleared 67% of shell licenses, to the current self-inspection list that is refined to "whether fortune-telling is carried out", China's private equity industry is evolving from "pursuing quantity" to "pursuing quality". 

Compasses and fortune-telling charts on the desks have been removed, replaced by schedules of affiliated parties, appropriateness assessment records and compliance working papers. The institutions remaining in this industry will be a group of institutions that truly rely on professional capabilities and credibility to make their way. 

A Shenzhen private equity practitioner commented that continuous penalties are conducive to accelerating the removal of shell private equities, pseudo-private equities and low-quality private equities from the market, and will also serve as a warning to other institutions, forcing the overall compliance level of the industry to improve. 

In the past, people raised financing by PPT, and later by the eight characters of birth — is this the progress of investment, or the retrogression of logic? The answer is already very clear. The 23 trillion-yuan private equity industry needs data and models, not compasses and Guan Gong statues.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Financial Gossip Girl Channel" (ID: baguanvpindao), author: Jianshan, authorized for release by 36Kr.