Thanks for your interesting research Nightwalker.
I’ve taken a close look. The whole thing is very hard to understand without knowing the chinese language and culture. I know a little chinese but it was only on asking a chinese speaking friend that it started to make sense.
In summary I think, from the descriptions, it’s possible that he is actually using only 100 images. While there are several cases where it looks like he has more images, I think actually there are alternative explanations. Looking at your slides:
- “There are two different numbers 15, together with different images. The video with ‘all’ his images contains only the one on the left.”
Does this show he is using more than one image for each number? I think not, because:
- We can see in the book that for several of the other numbers we can see, there is only one image. It’s only for 15 where there are two.
- The book is quite a nice, well produced book with reasonably high quality images. I don’t think it’s likely that it represents Wang Feng’s exact own system, as he would only have reason to keep rough notes on that. More likely, it’s something that he used to teach the principles of his system to other people, in classes. When teaching the system to other people, it’s quite normal to say to people “here’s a couple of ideas for images for the number 15; use whichever one you prefer”.
- “another picture from the video seems suspicious in regard of using more than one image.”
Actually, I don’t think this slide is suspicious at all. Translating the Chinese, it’s just a really standard description of the method of loci. He’s got the names of various areas/rooms along the top (front yard, living room, etc) and has ten images distributed around each room.
- “Both of them contain number 54, but none of them contains the same image.” “…54 and 61 are represented by the following images, which only partially correspond to the previous group of images.”
The images for 54 and 61 make more sense when you know where they come from.
In Chinese 54 can be read as meaning “4 May”, which is immediately recognisable to Chinese people as the date of National Youth Day in China. So the image of 54 is a “youth” or “teenager”. While there are two images for 54 (one a young guy in a suit, one a crazy teenager), I think they may actually just be pictures for a “youth”.
The same goes for 61 - “1 June”, which is National Children’s day in China. So the image is a baby/small child. While the images in the book and the room are different pictures, they both represent a baby.
So mystery solved - there is no evidence he has more than one image for 54 (“youth”) and 61 (“baby”).
I don’t have explanations for the other scenes where you’ve found discrepancies between the images. But I suspect that it is simply the case that for the TV, they are using images that are easy to explain, rather than the exact images that Wang Feng uses.
So, maybe it’s the case that Wang Feng really is just using a very simple system, with 100 images, and placing two images in each location. In which case the secret of his success can’t be his system, but has to be something else - maybe training harder or better.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone has any more information about Wang Feng’s techniques and system.
