Chloé Zhao
Chinese filmmaker (born 1982)
The numbers
2 + 7 = 9
Lo Shu grid
Missing: 4, 5, 6. Present digits repeat to show how many times they occur.
Life path 9 — The Humanitarian
Nine completes the cycle, and the tradition treats it as the number that has already been round once: broad, forgiving, oriented toward something larger than a single life. It is read as the number of the reformer and the artist. Its tension is the mirror of 6 — where 6 over-gives to the people in front of it, 9 is described as giving to humanity in general while the people in front of it wait.
Complete lines
Line of Expression
A complete line in the grid.
Line of Ambition
The 7-8-9 column complete. Read as drive that has both the wish and the machinery — the traditional marker of someone who converts intention into position.
What is missing
Missing 4
Read as impatience with structure and maintenance. Associated with starting well and leaving the scaffolding to someone else.
Missing 5
The centre of the grid, so its absence is weighted heavily. Read as difficulty adapting mid-course — a preference for the plan already chosen over the plan now indicated.
Missing 6
Read as a complicated relationship with obligation — either avoiding it or over-shouldering it, rarely a settled middle.
Vedic — Ank Jyotish
Moolank 4 comes from the day of the month alone; Bhagyank 9 from the whole date. They differ, which is the ordinary case — the two numbers answer different questions.
Rahu
The ascending lunar node — a shadow graha, not a physical body. Disruption, ambition, the unconventional. Read with more caution than any other.
Bhagyank uses the same arithmetic as the Western life path, so the two will always agree. That is not two traditions confirming each other — it is one calculation under two names.
In their words
It goes back to when I was a teenager in China, being in a place where there are lies everywhere. You felt like you were never going to be able to get out. A lot of info I received when I was younger was not true, and I became very rebellious toward my family and my background. I went to England suddenly and relearned my history. Studying political science in a liberal arts college was a way for me to figure out what is real. Arm yourself with information, and then challenge that too.
I love movies that don't necessarily tell me how I should feel or how I should think but give me this canvas that I can go away and have a conversation with myself and people around me.
I have gone through ups and downs in my relatively short career. And one thing I've learned is a bit of a cliché, but everything does happen for a reason.
The one thing that I learned really early on is that you've got to surround yourself with the right people. Because you can't change how people think — you can't control how they're going to think, how they're going to behave. But what you can do is make sure the people that are around you not only protect you but want to be with you because of who you are as an individual. I've been lucky in my whole career so far. Every single film we've made, I'm surrounded by people like that.
Someone I really respect and have been working with recently said to me, "You have to know that you have power. Know that you don't have to fight so hard that you're just on survival mode all the time. People around you are there to help you and they will be there when you fail. It's okay to ask for help.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I don't think I can pinpoint why my upbringing or experiences have made me that way, but I have always been an outsider myself; it doesn't matter where I went. I'm attracted to people who are on the periphery of society. I've been like this since high school. I liked mangas growing up and the ones I was drawn to were not about mainstream characters.
Sourced from Wikiquote, restricted to the subject’s own sourced sections.