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China’s equivalent of the prognosticating Octopoda is an individual called “X From the Future”, who correctly forecast before the World Cup began that Spain would meet Netherlands in the final.
On June 13 he/she wrote on a Baidu forum: “I come from the near future. I know many people will think this is a joke but here are some facts. The evidence (for what I have said) is that the World Cup final will include the Netherlands and Spain.”
X From the Future then wrongly predicted a 2-1 victory for the Netherlands, with Sneijder and “someone else from the bench” scoring the Dutch goals.
“I will come back one month later, at that time you will believe everything I say about the future.”
Well, he was less prescient than a mollusc but the interesting thing is how quickly X From the Future became an Internet phenomenon.
His fans quickly started calling him “Emperor of the Future” and up to the final on Sunday his post attracted 33.2 million hits, or up to 20,000 a second at one point, and there were nearly 380,000 comments, enough to give him a Baidu Wiki.
So, from zero to hero in four weeks, all on the back of a 15-1 shot at guessing who would win a few soccer matches.
As X From the Future had promised, there was a follow-up post on Monday that admitted: “I do not come from the future, I exist in the real world of an ordinary person.”
The honest soothsayer said his prediction came in a dream and then rubbished claims made by his critics, who insisted he was a gambling speculator, an alien or an octopus in disguise.
Which brings us back to one other individual in China with an uncanny knack for prediction. Sister Lotus is a celebrity because she has a thick skin and takes no notice whatsoever when her risible efforts at modeling are laughed at. She is most famous for bending her body into an S-shape.
Throughout the tournament, like many other models (including Zhang Ziyi), Sister Lotus could not wait to get her kit off and put one of the team’s colors on and become eye candy on the Web.
Sister Lotus, however, was unusual in the sense that she did not give up, even when every team she supported then failed, including Portugal, England, Argentina and Brazil. Netizens called her the kiss of death and said her support inevitably doomed the side.
This came to a head with the Germany Vs Spain game, for which Sister Lotus hedged her bets and wore the soccer strips of both teams.
It is ironical, perhaps, that in this pseudo techno-scientific age when God and superstition are dead, the soothsayer is listened to more closely than ever. But at least they are not taken seriously.
