程省

Very little is known about Cheng Sheng's life: his nationality, dates of birth and death, and English name are all unrecorded, and public information is limited. Judging from the eight works collected here, his writings center almost entirely on The Secret Manual of Character Divination (Cezhi Mibei), including a combined edition and separate volumes one through seven, indicating a fairly complete treatise on the subject. Character divination is a traditional Chinese divinatory art that interprets the strokes, radicals, and structure of Chinese characters to infer fortune or misfortune, and it was widely practiced among the people. Cheng Sheng's text is notable for its systematic classification and concrete examples, combining analysis of character forms with divinatory experience, and has the character of both a practical manual and a reference compilation. These works are categorized as classics and culture, suggesting their value for the study of traditional folk custom and character analysis, and they are suitable for readers interested in divinatory culture and the evolution of Chinese character forms.