Chinese culture may seem distant to someone born more than 40 years ago in Argentina or another Latin American country, but it is certainly not for Ludovica Squirru, the youngest daughter of the first cultural attaché of the first Argentine Embassy in China, in 1945.

"My father studied law in China, he was a translator of Mao's poems... He was totally in love with Chinese culture," recalled with nostalgia the popular Argentine television actress and astrologer, who just dropped the 2023 edition of her annual Chinese horoscope in the U.S. 

"My father raised us in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in a totally oriental environment, initiating us in Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Chinese habits and traditions... His love for China rubbed off on me, and the only thing I wanted as a child was to go to China," she told AL DIA.

Finally, in 1984, at the age of 30, Squirru traveled to China, and there she wrote one of her first books, My China: Intimate Diary of a Journey, where she narrates the adventure of traveling alone to the Asian country with a suitcase and a lot of questions about oriental astrology when there was no Internet and it wasn't fashionable to travel to exotic places. At that time, she began to study oriental philosophy in Buenos Aires and integrated Chinese astrology into a popular Sunday TV sketch, but she felt the need to deepen her knowledge in the country where everything began, also to be taken more seriously.

"It was the 1980s, there were reporters coming up to ask me if I was making it all up," she laughed.

Over time, Squirru has become one of the most respected Chinese astrologers in Latin America, coinciding with globalization and a greater migratory flow.

"I think the East has already reached the West: there are Chinese communities everywhere — New York, Mexico, Peru — more and more people are celebrating the Chinese New Year, and in the U.S. there are thousands of books by Chinese authors that have brought people closer to Chinese culture and astrology," she said. As with everything in life," she added, "there is no obligation to believe, one approaches what one has more affinity to.”

Hinge generation

This year 2023 — the year of the Water Rabbit, according to the Chinese horoscope — is a blind year, according to Squirru, which implies that it will bring many more migratory flows, not only to the U.S., but to Argentina and Latin America in general, "since it is one of the few places left on the planet with water and land, and where migration laws are much easier for anyone to enter," she augured.

"It's also where we need more fusions of races from around the world to start a territory that is totally stagnant because of the governments we have. The revolution of the future is immigration", she assured, "and I am confident that there will be huge waves," more in Latin America, the South, than in the USA or Europe. 

On the other hand, 2023 will bring "new human beings, and also more people, not only from NGOs, working in search of systemic changes, wanting to help in every way. There will be much more communication, cooperation... the world is asking us to participate in one way or another," she said.

Squirru is convinced that we are at the foundations of a hinge generation, which we will not get to see, but which will forge a change in the way we live, since the current one is not sustainable.

"We have all somehow been touched by misfortune due to climate change, a conflict, a pandemic... 2023 represents everything that will move long before the year 2024, the year of the dragon," she concluded.

Finally, the author warns that Chinese astrology, like Chinese medicine, "is more preventive than predictive." It is true that there are many readers who buy her books to know what the future holds for them, but what she intends is that the Chinese horoscope, when studied in depth, "becomes an instrument of self-knowledge to guide them in time."