The Power of Places: Feng Shui - The Chinese Art of Geomancy
Tim Baker
You Are Where You Live,
You Are Where You Live
An aged temple, its curved roofs rising out of the mists, the sound of a deep gong echoing
from its dim interior.
A modern office tower, designed by the latest and most fashionable foreign architect,
businessmen bustling in and out via free-floating escalators.
Both are Chinese buildings, separated by great differences of time and culture. What
principles could possibly connect them?
When I first heard of the Bank of Hong Kong Tower by the noted English architect Richard
Foster, I was struck by reference to a certain Chinese tradition that played an integral
part in its design. Not only was the orientation of the entrance escalators determined by
this tradition, but even the structural system had been changed to meet its demands, and
many facets of the building's interior were also determined by it. This tradition was
called feng-shui, or sometimes geomancy.
When I asked one of my Chinese colleagues, an engineer, if he knew of this tradition, he
looked very puzzled and said he had never heard of it. After I insisted that he must know
of it and wrote the name out for him, he realized that I had been pronouncing it in a way
that no Chinese would ever recognize. He said that he had of course heard of it but that
he would not believe in such a bunch of superstition-although he did know that his aunt's
house was situated in such a way that money would supposedly roll right in her back door.The Tradition of Feng-Shui
Feng-shui, the word I found so hard to pronounce, is a Chinese tradition dating back
perhaps 2,500 years to the Han dynasty. Its name is composed of two characters,
individually meaning wind and water.
The collective significance of the name is not certain, although some people interpret it
as the collecting energy of water and the dispersing energy of wind, two ways of analyzing
the ebb and flow of events in our life. Others think it refers to the ideal site for a
building-on the southern sunny side of a slope, cooled by summer breezes, and with a view
of a river winding its way in front. Whatever the meaning of the name, feng-shui has a
deep place in traditional Chinese culture and increasing prominence in the modern world.
In pre-modern China, the significance of almost every aspect of the built or natural world
could be determined by feng-shui. The compass direction of city gates and their
relationship to distant mountains; the location of major public buildings and their
orientation; the location of the front door or kitchen of an individual's house; even the
arrangement of furniture (the Emperor had the furniture of his rooms of state adjusted
daily according to feng-shui requirements)-all would require the services of a
professional feng-shui master.
In turn, feng-shui could be correlated to almost any aspect of daily life: the success of
one's career, the happiness of a marriage, health or illness, how well one might do in the
imperial examination system. All were seen to be the result of, or at least influenced by,
the environment of one's home.
Naturally, this gave rise to many stories of success and ill fate, as well as to many
bitter and even bloody disagreements between neighbors as to alleged bad effects on
someone's feng-shui. If a sharp corner of a wall or building pointed at a neighbor's front
door, that would bode ill for the occupants of that home. Cutting into the earth would
disrupt the flow of natural energy and harm the people living nearby. The advent of
Western culture, with its railroads and church steeples, was especially grievous.
Feng-shui regarded grave sites as having strong effects on the descendents of those
interred there. The layout of the surrounding mountains and rivers, the type of soil,
whether the location was felt to have "energy" in the earth- all of these would
affect whether the grave site was favorable or unfavorable. Traditional texts have many
accounts of remains being moved to more propitious locations decades after the original
burial. It was said of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Chek that the grave of one of his female
ancestors was especially auspicious. The Chinese Communists, although fervent in their
disavowals of such superstitions, took care to destroy the grave site when the area came
under their control.
Today, although many Chinese such as my engineer friend would pooh-pooh this ancient
tradition, few commercial buildings in places such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are
designed and constructed without the issue of the building's feng-shui coming up.
From the selection of the site to the shape of the building to the precise time to start
construction, a great many factors could fall under the view of the feng-shui master. Even
the skeptics, when business or family life take a turn for the worse, might discreetly ask
friends if they know of a reliable feng-shui master.
In the West, especially over the past ten years, knowledge of this tradition has spread
beyond the Chinese community. Real estate brokers in Los Angeles will know that a house
will be difficult to sell to a Chinese buyer if there is a tree directly in line with the
main door. When business just won't pick up, a Cleveland restaurateur may ask a friend's
feng-shui master to come in and give some suggestions. A wealthy individual building a
trendy home in Sun Valley may want advice because he heard feng-shui might be a good
thing.
The Theory of Feng-Shui
Traditionally, feng-shui is divided into the Form School and the Compass School. These
schools are not entirely clear or separate; there is a great deal of overlap and mutual
dependency between them.
The Form School relates both to material objects and to energy. Objects are said to have
effects based on their shape, such as a mountain shaped like a dragon or a tiger.
Different shapes of houses have different characteristics and the shape of an interior
space, such as a beam directly over your desk, also has its effect.
Here objects are not seen to be inanimate, as Western science might view them, but
possessed of different types of energy.
One type of energy is latent within the earth, analagous to the energy currents within the
body treated in acupuncture. Another type of energy could be described as an energy of
use. This would be represented by roads, rivers or stairs, which have motion along them.
It can also be seen in the effect of doorways, which channel energy through them. A third
type of energy is the force, if one could call it that, that one might experience from
something like a sharp corner, even though one has not actually hit against it.
The Compass School relates to issues of direction, as well as to dates and times of day.
This may be harder to accept for those of us instilled with the Western logic of cause and
effect. My father, a physician and university professor, once said that although some of
the ideas of feng-shui seemed to make good sense, the part about what direction your house
faced depending on when you were born made him a bit queasy.
To understand this way of thinking, it may help to appreciate the view of
interconnectedness which is an almost unspoken foundation of the Chinese attitude toward
the nature of the universe.
Without falling back on contemporary notions of ecology, Gaia theory, or what have you, it
could simply be said that all events are seen to be related to one another. It is not as
if the time of your birth causes certain directions to be better for you, but rather that
your birthdate and other aspects of your life are manifestations of one basic network.
Two basic tenets of Chinese science are also important to the theory behind feng-shui:
Five Elements and Yin-Yang. These two principles tie together all aspects of Chinese
traditions, from acupuncture and herbal medicine to feng-shui and fortune telling.
The term "Five Elements," as the Chinese phrase Wu-Xin is traditionally
translated, may mislead readers into the belief that this concept is something like the
ancient Greek four elements, or perhaps our current periodical table of the elements. In
fact the Chinese term might better be translated as "Five Qualities," since each
of the five describes a quality of both the physical and non-physical aspects of our
world. So the element Wood, for instance, could equally well describe a time of day, the
shape of a mountain, an individual's position in his family or a planet in the heavens.
The Five Elements are Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth, to use their traditional Chinese
order. They have a productive sequence of relationships and a destructive one. Thus Metal
produces Water, Water produces Wood, Wood produces Fire, Fire produces Earth, and Earth
produces Metal. In the counter-sequence, Metal destroys Wood, Wood destroys Earth, Earth
destroys Water, Water destroys Fire, which in turn destroys Metal.
Thus, a house which has a shape classified as Wood may tend to be better in a period of
time characterized by Water, and worse in a period characterized by Fire. A road
approaching from a Fire direction will be beneficial for a person born in an Earth year.
As you can see, this form of analysis can go into extreme detail.
Yin-Yang theory is more fundamental and less prone to systematization. It describes basic,
primal relationships from the standpoint of polarities: light and dark, active and
passive, hot and cold, masculine and feminine. Feng-shui attempts to achieve a balance of
these elements, seeing each in its proper place and amount. Yin-Yang theory is combined
with the Five Elements, and these are in turn related to I-Ching theory.
Exterior Feng-Shui
How could the places in which we live and work not have a profound effect on the
quality of our lives? It is my experience that the periods of my life in which I had lived
in different places do seem to have different qualities associated with them. It is a
question of how one might quantify or analyze those differences.
In studying feng-shui, one starts with the assumption that design for offices is
essentially the same as that for homes, and that the home is essentially the model for
analyzing any other type of building.
One also learns that the feng-shui of a building can be broken down into the influence
that comes from elements outside the building and the influence of the interior. This
includes both man-made and natural features. For example, roads would be evaluated in much
the same way as rivers, since both are conduits of energy-either fast-moving and
stressful, or languid and peaceful.
There are general guidelines for siting a home or other building. For example, it is
favorable to be on the inside of a curving road or river, enclosed by the slower moving
portion of the river. A building in this type of situation is said to accumulate wealth or
inhabitants, or perhaps to engender a more stable life for its occupants. By contrast, a
building on the outside of the same curving road or river, bounded by faster moving, more
turbulent energy, would xtend to have its energy or wealth drained away.
One of the more notorious caveats is to avoid having a building with a street running
directly towards it, although there are some important qualifications to this rule. For
example, if the street in front of the building slopes away from it, that is much worse
than if it slopes towards the building. If the street sloping toward the building is
winding then that can be good, and if the winding street comes from a good direction then
it can be very good.
Rivers are much the same: slow-moving, winding rivers are generally good; straight and
rapid rivers are not so good. Flowing toward a house is generally good and flowing away
from a house is generally bad.
The ideal geomantic site is sometimes compared to an armchair-well protected with a hill
or higher elevation in back and with two comfortable hills as armrests on either side.
These land forms do not need to be dramatic. I have seen professional geomancers look at a
piece of property that at first glance would appear completely flat, and by noting subtle
traces of the flow of water across it, determine the essential slope of the land and how
the building should be sited.
There are some external features that are generally unfavorable; these tend to be sharp or
pointed buildings or landforms. Corners pointing at a building, especially corners sharper
than 90 degrees, will have a bad effect. An object such as a sizable tree or a telephone
pole directly in front of the front door, and closer than the height of the object, might
indicate that the occupants' progress in life would be blocked.
There are a great many other exterior features which might be considered, such as the
soil, the shape of the property and location of the building on it, the shapes of
particular landforms within view, and the shape of the building itself. However, the most
significant factor is the compass direction from the front door of any significant
feature. Mountains, tall buildings, bodies of water, approaching roads-the direction in
which these lie can have more significance than the objects themselves.
Interior Feng-Shui
If we look at a building's interior, there are three areas of primary importance: the
front door, the kitchen and the master bedroom. In considering a commercial space, the
office of the person in charge would be analogous to the master bedroom and the accounting
department or similar area would correspond to the kitchen.
The front door is the point of interface between the exterior and interior. The compass
direction of the entrance is critical, depending on the owners' birthdates, and can
determine many areas of interior arrangement. Also, the door itself is important: it
should be large and high, and double doors are especially good.
The position of the front door is also said to determine the balance of masculine or
feminine energy in the house. A house or apartment where most of the floor area is to the
left of the front entrance is said to be better for the male occupants, and vice versa for
females. If the left or right area of the building protrudes, that emphasizes the effect.
In general, it is considered to be better to have the entrance more or less centered
regardless of the sex of the occupants.
One also considers what is seen when looking inside from the front door. One of the very
worst situations possible is for there to be an opening at the back of the house directly
opposite and visible from the front door. Intervening doorways don't help the situation,
and in fact make it worse. The possible effect this layout is described as very serious
and sudden, such as a heart attack, divorce, serious accident or bankruptcy.
A layout often seen in Western homes is a stairway that leads straight down to the front
door. This may make it difficult for the household to accumulate money, and it is best if
the front door leads into a vestibule which does not have a direct view into the rest of
the home.
The location of the kitchen in a house is critical. According to most schools of
feng-shui, the appropriate location for the kitchen will depend on the compass direction
of the front door. In addition, the location of the stove, as an element of fire and the
source of food, is determined by its compass direction.
The sink, as an element of water and place where things are drained away, is located in
conjunction with the stove. As a place where energy is accumulated, it is good for the
kitchen not to have doors facing one another. A stairway coming into the kitchen is said
to be good for the accumulation of money, and stairs going down to the basement (a common
convenience in the West) would have the reverse effect.
For the master bedroom, a location at the back of the house surrounded by rooms on both
sides is good. The door of this room should not face directly towards stairs going down
and the room should not have a second door going out, making the bedroom into a through
passage.
The location of the bed is considered to be very important. The most basic rule for the
location of beds is that they should not be in the path of a doorway, and if there is a
series of doorways in a line, the bad effect will be multiplied. More specifically, it is
said that any part of the sleeping body in line with the door will develop problems. To
make the situation even more complicated, the compass direction which the bed faces is
said to have an effect based on the user's date of birth.
If a beam or ledge on the ceiling crosses the line of a person in bed, there will be a
harmful effect on the body similar to that of a door. A column coming out from the wall,
with the corner pointing at the bed, is also said to be bad for the person who sleeps
there. The factors by which one locates desks in the home or office are virtually the same
as those for locating beds.
Feng-Shui in Context
In 1989, after my initial study of these rules and systems drew to an end, I moved to
Ohio. There I spent a full year searching until I found an appropriate site for my house,
protected on the sides and back with hills, facing south with a pleasant river in front. I
built a house following very closely what I had learned from my teacher. The orientation
was carefully established, the dimensions of the front door were auspicious and the time
of putting the door in place was selected by a professional.
After living there for a year and a half, I lost my job and my long term relationship
ended. A more prudent, less stubborn person might have set about finding a new job, a new
relationship and a new way of evaluating the effect of buildings on people. I however
moved to Taiwan to devote myself full-time to learning Chinese language and philosophy
and, eventually, more about feng-shui.
I bring this up for a very important reason: it is necessary to have a perspective on what
geomancy can and can't do for you.
My teacher pointed out that feng-shui could provide at most one third of the background to
what happens in our life. The second third would be what we start out with, our heredity
or our karma. The third part would be our luck, what happens that is either without an
explanation or under the purview of astrology.
Although a third might seem like not much to work with, it is the only part susceptible to
our manipulation. Personally, I do believe that there is something to feng-shui, but I
think that we could approach this tradition with an open mind. Our own hard work, patience
and sense of humor will do more for the quality of our life than any number of feng-shui
masters.
This article may have taught you only a few practical tricks and no deep secrets; I
actually have none of the latter to transmit. But I might at least teach you how to
pronounce the word. It's easiest if you start with the English words "hung-sway"
and then change the "hung" to "fung", or even better, to
"foong" and the "sway" to "schway".
Foong-schway: it doesn't look as good but it will sound a lot better, and it is as
good a place as any to start.
Tim Baker is an architect who developed an interest in
feng-shui in 1986. He is currently enrolled in the Masters program in Chinese language at
Taiwan National University, in preparation for further study of feng-shui, and working as
a consultant to an architecture office in Taipei.
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