Guan Yin lots belong to an older Chinese custom called qiuqian (求簽), known as kau cim in Cantonese. A person draws a numbered bamboo stick from a cylinder after asking a question at a temple altar. Similar practices are recorded as early as the Jin dynasty, in the third to fifth centuries CE, in divination texts such as the Jade Box Records. By the Song dynasty, from 960 to 1279, the custom was common among scholars and ordinary people alike.

Guanyin is the Chinese form of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, whose worship came to China from India along the Silk Road. She is one of several deities with her own dedicated set of 100 lots, alongside figures such as Guan Gong, Mazu and Wong Tai Sin. Both Buddhist and Taoist temples use her lots, and they remain some of the most consulted in Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and beyond.

At the temple, a person kneels, states a question, and shakes the cylinder until one stick falls out. They then throw a pair of crescent-shaped blocks, called jiaobei, to confirm it is the right lot. This page uses the same set of verses, without the incense or the blocks. The Buddha's advice in the Kalama Sutta still applies: test any guidance against your own reflection, rather than accepting it as fixed fate.