What Did You Dream About?
Find out what it means — three thousand years of Chinese dream wisdom, made simple.
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How this dictionary works
Each public entry gives a quick answer, a recorded classical-source line, cultural interpretation, scenarios, and a last-reviewed date.
Classical sources
The review set focuses on entries with source lines from Meng Lin Xuan Jie, Zhou Gong Jie Meng, Huangdi Neijing, and related traditions.
Editorial process
Modern claims are avoided unless sourced. Folk associations are labeled as cultural material, not advice or prediction.
Popular Dream Symbols
Ancient Wisdom, Modern Search
Every interpretation on this site is grounded in a lineage of Chinese classical texts that have shaped dream culture for more than three thousand years.
Zhou Gong Jie Meng 《周公解梦》
Attributed to the Duke of Zhou (c. 11th century BCE), this is the folk dream-reading tradition that gave Chinese dream culture its household name — "Zhou Gong explains dreams." For three millennia, Chinese families have consulted it to decode everyday symbols.
Meng Lin Xuan Jie 《梦林玄解》
Our primary structured source. Compiled in the late Ming dynasty by scholar Chen Shiyuan, it is the most systematic Chinese dream encyclopedia — thousands of entries spanning celestial phenomena, animals, people, objects, and life events.
Huangdi Neijing 《黄帝内经》
The foundational Chinese medical classic. Its "Lingshu · Yin Xie Fa Meng" chapter explains how imbalances in organs and the five elements produce specific dream imagery — the basis for the physiological reading we attach to each entry.
Zhouli · Zhanmeng 《周礼·占梦》
The "Rites of Zhou" records the official six-dream classification — calm, dread, thought, waking, joyful, and fear dreams — used by court diviners. Every entry on this site carries this six-dream tag for context.