Ancient ritual sees birds battered to death with a hammer then thrown out of the home; in offshoot custom, boiled egg yolk can determine luck
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenYating Yangin BeijingPublished: 6:00pm, 16 Mar 2026Ethnic minority groups in China have long relied on a gruesome method to predict their fortunes: beating a rooster to death and reading its femur bones, a practice that has lasted for centuries.
Tracing back to the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties, the custom is known as “Dajibu”, meaning chicken divination.
It originated from ancient spiritual beliefs in southwestern China, where people lacking access to medicine would beat bronze drums to pray for healing.
Chicken bone divination remains prevalent today among ethnic groups such as the Yi, Mosuo, Zhuang and Yao.
It is a traditional form of divination that uses a chicken as a medium, predicting good or bad fortune by observing its physical characteristics after it is slaughtered.
