A:TLA Annotations

Symbolism and Imagery in Aunt Wu’s village

The circular door to Aunt Wu’s house is called a moon gate 月亮门.

Moon Gates have many different spiritual meanings for every piece of tile on the gate and on the shape of it. The sloping roofs of the gate represent the half moon of the Chinese Summers and the tips of the tiles of the roof have talisman on the ends of them.

The cloud design we see on the villagers’ clothes are a pun on the word ‘yun’, since both clouds 云 and luck 运 are pronounced that way.

This specific, and wildly used pattern, resembles the ling zhi mushroom, the 'mushroom of immortality’.

This pattern is to symbolize never ending luck and good fortune.

Read more about: The Hidden or Implied Meaning of Chinese Charm Symbols

Aunt Wu’ divination method is based on the Oracle Bones, on the Jia Gu

Oracle bones  甲骨 are pieces of bone normally from ox scapula or turtle plastron (underside) which were used for divination chiefly during the late Shang Dynasty 1600 BCE–1046 BCE.

The bones were first inscribed with divination in oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; pinyin: jiǎgǔwén) by using a bronze pin, and then heated until crack lines appeared in which the divinations were read.

Aunt Wu’s name:

There are two possible puns for her name. The first one, Wu - 巫 meaning witch or shaman, is, given her occupation, rather obvious.

The second one, a reference to Emperor Wu Ding - 武丁 from the Shang Dynasty, who not only practiced divination via oracle bones, but also via dream divination:

In the third year of his reign he had vivid dreams about the way to rule his kingdom.

The screen in Aunt Wu’s waiting room has calligraphy in Grass Script on it. Grass Script is a highly stylized version of calligraphy and while extremely beautiful also extremely hard to read. I cannot read it.

 草书; sometimes translated as Grass script (see Names below) is a style of Chinese calligraphy. Cursive script is faster to write than other styles, but difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it. It functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style. People who can read standard or printed forms of Chinese may not be able to comprehend this script at all.

Follow this link to more examples of Chinese calligraphy, all of them which we see at one point or another in the show.