Feng shui
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- ''For other uses of the term Feng Shui, see Feng Shui (disambiguation).
Feng shui or fengshui (Simplified Chinese: }}}; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; IPA: [fɤŋ ʂueɪ] [listen] ) in Chinese, may also be pronounced IPA: [fɛŋ ʃuːi] [listen] . The term 風水 is fūsui in Japan and pung-su in Korea. In Chinese the literal translation is Wind Water. The Book of Burial (c. 300 BCE) provides one clue for the name: "The energy that rides the wind stops at the edge of water and is retained."
Overview
Feng shui is a belief system that originated in ancient China. All capital cities of China from at least the time of the Xia were built according to the rules of feng shui. Villages and houses were also constructed in accordance with the rules. Only within the last 25 years has the practice moved indoors and concentrated on interior design.Although feng shui is traditionally linked with Taoism, feng shui had been in use for several thousand years before Laozi was born.
Feng shui was the reason the Chinese invented the compass, called a Luopan. Feng shui also uses a comprehensive array of calculations involving mathematical iterations. It has foundation texts, core theories and methods, and an impressive past based on archæological discoveries and the work of archæoastronomers. Basically the techniques ("schools") fall into the categories San He (the so-called "form school", although the compass name means "Three Harmonies") and San Yuan (the so-called "compass school", although the compass name means "Three Cycles").
Feng shui was labeled geomancy by 19th-century Christian missionaries to China. However, geomancy and feng shui differ widely in their scope and techniques. Nineteenth-century ideas from Spiritualism can be found in feng shui as practiced in Western countries, as can self-help techniques and affirmations, New Age beliefs, Western interior design, and classic confidence schemes such as cold reading and fishing.
Since 1949 feng shui has been illegal in the PRC, primarily because Mao Zedong (who had studied feng shui) denounced many practitioners' propensity for fraud. Other reasons have been suggested, which is why a department of the Chinese government was assigned to oversee its use. Ole Bruun's fieldwork has shown that during the Cultural Revolution, most feng shui practitioners had their books burnt, were persecuted and jailed, and underwent extreme privations for their knowledge of ancient Chinese culture.
Feng shui is widely used in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. It is not well-known among younger Chinese in the PRC. However, the rapid modernization of China has led to feng shui becoming a worthy subject for scholarly inquiry at Chinese universities. As Chinese scholars increasingly work with their counterparts in the rest of the world, the history of feng shui is being pieced together.
Archaeology
In 1978 researchers presented evidence at a Zhouyi conference that the Hetu and Luoshu, the two most-recognizable diagrams related to feng shui, are actually 3-D star maps. A page in "The Astronomical Phenomena" (Tien Yuan Fa Wei) compiled by Bao Yunlong in the 13th century also shows the Luoshu as a star diagram. The original trigrams of the Yijing, known popularly as the eight digrams or "Bagua," seem to be included in these maps.
Traditional Feng Shui began as an interplay of construction and astrology. An early Yangshao village at Banpo (c. 4800 BC) had its cemetery at the north and its dwellings built on a north-south axis. The dwellings were oriented to catch the mid-afternoon sun at its warmest a few days after the winter solstice. (Some tribes in southern China still refer to this month as "House-building Month.") Professor David Pankenier and his associates performed retrospective computation on the Chinese sky at the time of the Banpo dwellings to show that the asterism Yingshi (Lay out the Hall, in the Warring States period and early Han era) corresponded to the sun's location at this time. (This housing alignment persisted throughout the Neolithic through the history of China; it is used today whenever space permits.)
The asterism Yingshi originally was Xuangong (“Dark Palace”), a name that indicated winter and the northern sky. It was a star-landmark of the spring equinox and winter solstice from c. 7000 BC to c. 3900 BC. Ding (α Peg) was the leading-star. Yingshi was used to indicate the appropriate time and orientation for a capital city, according to the Shijing; by the time of the Zhou the asterism had been used to orient homes, villages, and capital cities for three thousand years. Most capital cities of China, including Beijing, follow this design. The rules for capital cities and other habitations can be found in the Zhou-era Kaogong ji (Manual of Crafts). Rules for builders were codified in the Lu ban jing (Carpenter's Manual).
A grave at Puyang (3000 BC) that contains mosaics of the Dragon and Tiger constellations and Beidou (Big Dipper) is similarly oriented along a north-south axis, and it includes the classical "heaven-round, earth-square" design applied to other buildings in China at varying periods, and was used in the design of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
At Lamao, an excavation recently yielded an artifact (c. 3000 BC) that researchers claim to be marked with the Twelve Branches commonly used for calendars and feng shui calculations. Other markings appear to be constellations of the time.
An excavated grave at Lingjiatan contained a jade plaque (c. 3000 BC) with a compass design. (Similar markings were also found on pottery from the Taihu region.) According to researchers, the shape of the jade denotes the Earth. The center square is the sun. The larger circle is the movement of Earth through the seasons. The "arrows" point to cardinal and intercardinal directions. Historian Li Xueqin links this artifact with the liuren astrolabe, the ancestor of the shi and the Luopan.
At Taosi the traditional home of King Yao, an observatory (c. 2400 BC) with 12 sighting windows may have been used as mentioned in Yaodian (in the Shijing) and Wudibenji (in the Shiji), as Yao assigned astronomers to observe sunrise, sunset, and evening stars in culmination. According to modern astronomers, Yao's pronouncement of the four major constellations is consistent with the astronomy for the age of the observatory. By tradition Yao is linked with the practice of feng shui.
Erlitou, one of the capitals of Xia and Shang, seems to have been where the standards for building capital cities were developed.
The tombs of Shang kings and their consorts at the cemetery of Xibeigang near Anyang lie on a north-south axis, ten degrees east of due north. The Xia and Shang palaces at Erlitou are also on a north-south axis, slightly west of true north. These orientations were obtained by astronomy; the magnetic compass or zhinan zhen was not invented until the later Han era.
Instruments
Feng shui devices in the late Qin and early Han eras consist of two-sided boards with astronomical sightlines. Liuren astrolabes have been unearthed intact from Qin-era tombs at Wangjiatai and Zhoujiatai. These devices date between 278 BC and 209 BC. The earliest feng shui manual unearthed by archaeologists has been dated to the Qin era.
Today feng shui practitioners can select from three types of Luopan: San He, San Yuan, and the Zong He that combines the other two.
Early Use in Western Countries
During the early 1800s, feng shui was introduced to the U.S. with the first Chinese immigrants. The notorious Four Corners section of New York, which was then a Chinese ghetto, featured gambling houses and other structures that incorporated feng shui, as did the Chinatowns in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 19th-century Australia, the Joss House was built using feng shui. It has also been practiced by western "hongs" or trading companies to satisfy local business communities and to encourage luck in business.
Postmodernism
The adaptation of Feng Shui to spatial arrangements in the West has been a controversial trend of the postmodern age. Architects and landscape designers around the world are sometimes asked to include feng shui principles in their designs, even in places that do not have significant Asian populations. Planners use feng shui to increase sales and morale; homeowners use feng shui for the design and construction of a home.
The famous Bank of China Tower on Hong Kong Island, a blade-like design by I.M. Pei (not a feng shui adept), was supposedly a deliberate curse upon the Government House and the former British administration. No updated version of this fable exists to explain effects on the current occupants, or on the next-door Citigroup building, allegedly another "target" of the designer. In response, it is alleged, the architects of the Citigroup building designed it with a curved facade in order to shield and deflect the negative elements emanating from the neighboring Bank of China building.
The Cheung Kong Tower is one of the most famous buildings in Hong Kong and was reviewed by Li Ka Shing, feng shui consultant. The building inside is totally in green and the major entrance is toward the east. Li Ka Shing believed this would bring more wealth to the Li Ka Shing family in the soil of Hong Kong.
Skepticism
It is hard for the public to ignore the glut of paperbacks on the market touting the magical benefits that special placement of mirrors, arrows, use of certain colors, and flowing water can have on one's life, finances, and relationships. People have trouble with the competing claims of self-appointed "experts" of feng shui. No one is certain whether self-deluding thoughts about pseudoscience are at work or the placebo effect, or plain old fraud.Many Western interpretations of feng shui have been invented in the last few years. None of them are recognized by Asians as legitimate.
The Black Sect version of feng shui, which began in 1960s Hong Kong (and incorporated as a U.S. church in 1986), explains feng shui as the art of arranging objects within a home to obtain an optimum flow of qi. Most of the latter-day versions (including "intuitive," Fuzion, Pyramid, etc.) are variants on this theme. In traditional feng shui, the objects within a structure matter less than the siting of a building and its local environment — especially microclimates. According to fieldwork in rural China by Ole Bruun, qi flow is rarely a concern in traditional feng shui. ("Qi" as used in feng shui differs from "qi" as used in traditional Chinese medicine; space weather is a concern in feng shui while electrochemical impulses are a concern in traditional Chinese medicine.)
Trivia
- In the Hong Kong edition of Monopoly the boardgame, "Chance" is also known as "Feng Shui".
- UK Psychedelic rock band Ozric Tentacles have a song Feng Shui on the album Jurassic Shift. They also have released a live version in which multi instrumentalist Jumping John claims "Feng Shui is the art of walking through the forest, treading on mushrooms without breaking them".
- The band Gnarls Barkley also have a song called Feng Shui on the album St. Elsewhere
- Feng Shui was featured in an episode of
See also
External links
- [Traditional Feng Shui Resource @ SmilingBamboo.com]
- [Online Feng Shui Magazine]
- [Wu Xing - 5 Elements of Feng Shui]
- [Feng Shui at Enchanted Spirit]
- [Fengshui Gate (Dr. Stephen Field)]
- [Feng Shui] in the Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll, PhD
- [Fung Shui Woods] (a common feature of villages in southern China)
- [Feng Shui] (Waterbed-Magazin Germany)
- [Feng Shui] - A Christian view
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