Feng shui: Will it make your life better?

It is one of the most well-known sectors of Chinese thought, but nobody really knows what it is. Media pundits talk about its properties, but can’t even agree how to pronounce it. Will it make your life better? Will it make your life endurable? Or will it make your life a misery as you endlessly fret about the positioning of your furniture and the color of your walls?

This is feng shui, the ancient, immutable laws of the universe that are constantly revised, bent and broken every day. You can’t do this, you must do that. Do such-and-such a thing and you will have good fortune. Do such-and-such a thing and you will be doomed, unless you also do 10 other things.

Feng shui has grown over many centuries, by trial and error, observation and superstition. At one level, there is little more to feng shui than a random collection of old wives’ tales, at another, it is one of the oldest sciences known to mankind. Like all collections of philosophy, some of it clearly works. Other parts require a leap of faith.

The First Science

In recent years, the people of the West have taken an interest in ecology and conservation. They have stopped trying to force the natural world to conform to the will of mankind, and started trying to live in harmony with it. But this has been part of feng shui for thousands of years. Modern times have brought an attempt to set feng shui principles down in stone, but there is no Great Answer to tie up all the loose ends. Some practitioners set special store in the points of the compass. Others prefer to emphasize colors and decoration. Still more use astrology and divination.

The words "feng shui" mean "wind and water," those things which can be felt but not seen, grasped but not held. Or at least, that is what a large number of Chinese people say. But an equally large number disagree. They claim "feng shui" refers not to the unfathomable qualities of natural phenomena, but to wind and water as forces. The waves crash in upon the shore. They are both symbols of the elements, and of humanity’s constant desire to better itself. Feng shui is all these things. Feng shui is none of them.

Form And Compass

Like the constant interplay of yin and yang, the dark and light that balances all things, feng shui eventually settled down into two schools, the Form school of object and abstract fortunes, and the Compass school, which relied upon lucky and unlucky directions. They are quite different, and it is the unceremonial showing together of these ideas that has confused many readers.

Feng shui began when people had a very different way of explaining the world. A seismologist will tell you not to build your house in an earthquake zone, because you will be close to a geological fault line where the tectonic plate is apt to shift again. A feng shui master will tell you that there is a restless dragon beneath the surface. Both the seismologist and the feng shui master agree that building in an earthquake zone is a bad idea, they just have different ways of explaining it. In their own way, they are both right.

There are a lot of feng shui rules that even real skeptics have trouble disputing. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that a house in a quiet neighborhood will have happier occupants than one in a noisy, smoky street. Feng shui masters will argue that a motorway flyover near your house will throw bad qi at you, but is that really such a far cry from a scientist showing you that carbon monoxide levels from car exhausts will increase the chances of illness if you live close to a busy road?

Feng shui has existed for thousands of years, but even in China its position is under threat. This is because its many achievements have been co-opted by newer, more acceptable disciplines, imported from the dynamic West: sociology, psychology, architecture, geography, ergonomics; feng shui reached many similar discipline claims to know everything about a little part of our lives, feng shui’s share of the original knowledge gets smaller and smaller. Perhaps one day, it will have only the weird superstitions left.

* * * ‘QI’: The Universal Life Force

All cultures around the world ask themselves what is missing from a dead body. The ancient Egyptians claimed that the missing component was breath itself and their word "ka" mixed the concepts of breath and soul. So did the ancient Greek "psyche," and so did the ancient Chinese "qi." (It is pronounced "chee" to rhyme with "tea"). It’s a nice, simple answer, but it creates more problems than it solves. It opens a whole new can of worms about where the qi goes when somebody dies. And if people have qi, does that mean that animals have qi as well? If animals have qi, doesn’t that mean that they must have souls, and does that mean we shouldn’t eat them?

Eventually the answers came back from the feng shui masters. Yes, everybody has qi, but so does everything else. Every single thing in the world is possessed by the divine energy of qi, and it is this life force that binds us all together. Animals, vegetables and minerals all have qi, and it is quite safe for humans to eat anything with good qi in it. But qi, like any other living thing, can grow stale and decay.

Qi, like the air itself, cannot be seen or held, but its presence can be felt. Living things have large amounts of qi, which leaves them when they die. Qi, like water, is kept freshest when it is constantly moving in slow swirls, and the idea of the curve became a fundamental principle in Chinese life.

Still another way in which qi can go bad is when it is strangled or trapped. Rooms that do not receive regular airings, such as cellars and attics, are real breeding grounds for bad qi, but there are other influences that can bring it about in day-to-day life. Dirt itself will give off a supernatural stench of bad qi, and if easy movement is blocked in a house (by, for example, a cramped entranceway), the good qi will have trouble circulating, and will eventually go bad.

Your personal qi will also be upset by distractions. Low ceilings, overhanging beams and any objects that can catch at your clothing will constantly gnaw at your well-being. If you are always fretting about the precious vase on a rickety table, worrying about the expensive crockery falling off the shelves, or bending down to avoid a low doorway, these activities will take their toll, and eventually combine to leave you feeling on edge. Harmonious living includes making your own life easier. Having a house that invites you to be at peace and relax is a guaranteed way of increasing good qi, and your own sense of happiness.

The sharp jutting objects that might tear at your clothes or trip you up on the stairs can affect you even if they are outside the house. Just as feng shui discourages straight lines, it also advises you to avoid sharp corners and pointed objects. A building across the road with a sharp, pointed roof, a garden with a model cannon facing outwards at your front door, or even curtain rails with pointed ends will all conspire to keep you out of harmony.

Feng shui lore states that even if something reminds you of something else, it is as if that thing were really in the room with you. This can be a good thing, since, for example, a photograph of a happy time will be as if that happy time is always with you. But equally, if a spiral staircase resembles a corkscrew it will work like a drill between your luck and life, and should be avoided.

* * * Wind And Water

The crucial factor in feng shui building is maintaining harmony with the forces of nature. Mere mortals cannot compete with the immense natural forces that shape mountains, decide the courses of rivers, and cause lighting to strike and earthquakes to rumble. For this reason, feng shui masters are particularly keen on unimposing little cottages, set amid bounteous gardens or protected by groves of trees.

We have already noted that "feng shui" means "wind and water," and it is the harnessing of these two forces that allows the best feng shui masters to gain better stores of qi. Hills or lines of trees will take the edge off the wind, changing it from harsh, unpleasant gusts to a warm, caressing breeze, in much the same way that a prism takes cold, white light and breaks it up into the colors of the rainbow. Water too is an important provider of qi. But you don’t want the forceful rush of a whitewater river crashing past your home; you want the slow, leisurely meanderings of a calm stream. Where water pools and circulates, so does good qi.

* * * Street Life

Possibly the best place you can hope to live in a built-up area is in the middle of a large park (unlikely unless you are a forest ranger) or in a cul-de-sac. Good qi loves cul-de-sacs. To lucky spirits, a cul-de-sac resembles a little pool of calm amid the bustle of a city. Traffic rarely troubles a cul-de-sac because it’s impossible to drive through it. You only drive into a cul-de-sac if you belong there. Another great thing about cul-de-sacs is that they are shaped like money bags. They store good qi, and with it luck and the chances to become wealthy.

* * * Dead Ends

However, there’s a difference between a cul-de-sac and a dead end. If your street just suddenly stops in the middle of nowhere, this will bring very bad luck to whoever lives in the last house in the row. The bad qi running in a straight line will smack into the end of the street and begin to pool up. The pool will eventually calm the bad qi down and transform it into good qi, but not before a few spikes of frustrated bad spirits have tried to shoot off in straight lines looking for somewhere else to go. If your front door is in their path, you’ll get far more than your fair share of bad luck unless you’ve taken steps to hold off their progress.

* * * T-Junctions

You will be in much deeper trouble if your house faces a straight street, for example, if it is on a T-junction. Cars will charge down the street and turn away before they smack into your garden wall, but demons are not so smart. If your door, gate or driveway directly faces the street that leads into the T-junction, this will be particularly tempting for bad lucks.

* * * Buckingham Palace

When the Queen of England is in London, she lives at Buckingham Palace. It has absolutely abysmal feng shui, because it’s been built facing a huge, long wide avenue that collects bad qi up from as far away as Trafalgar Square and throws it full-force right against the palace gates. Luckily for the British monarchy, there is a statue in the middle of a roundabout right in front of the gates, which just about deflects most of the bad qi. Still, it’s a very close call. The Queen is much better off when she is living in the country, but then again, a feng shui master would say that, wouldn’t he?

* * * In The Shadows

Bad qi in the city can also be created by stationary objects like buildings. Have you ever been in a forest of very tall trees? The branches overhead from the tallest trees will soak up all the sunlight and goodness from above. Smaller plants have less of a chance to grow, and the forest floor is often bare but for the large trunks at the bases of the big trees. For the same reason, try to avoid living in the shadow of tall buildings, because they will soak up all the good qi before it gets to you.

* * * Falling Objects

There is also a considerable chance that demons will fall on your house from above. It only takes one feng shui master on the 18th floor to banish evil from his house, and for all you know it will come tumbling down into your garden. If you find yourself dwelling in an area where this seems dangerous, ensure that any demons in your house or garden will have an easy exit like an open slat window or a small gap somewhere in the fence. Otherwise, they may stay around to cause trouble.

* * * Slices Of Bad Luck

Watch out for sharp corners of buildings. If they are pointed at your house, they will be shooting bad qi at you. In a street of typical, western-style buildings, it’s possible to find yourself running a gauntlet of bad qi, shooting at you from all areas. If some of the buildings are glassy skyscrapers, they may also be bouncing bad qi off their walls and back at each other again. It will be a kaleidoscope of catastrophe. However, in its favor, it’s possible to argue that the average business district is well lit, and the more lights you see, the better the areas’s feng shui will be.

* * * Knife Edges

There’s a shiny new business district in the north of Taipei, where a lot of the tower blocks have what appear at first glance to be very strange shapes.Many are not square at all, but irregular, and occasionally with rounded corners. This is to prevent the various businesses getting into escalating wars about who’s firing bad qi at whom. You probably won’t be lucky enough to live in such a considerate area (in fact, you would have to be a multinational corporation yourself before you could afford the rent) so look out for sharp corners from buildings, multi-story car parks or shop fronts that may be pointing at your house.

* * * Pei’s Perils

One of my favorite buildings in this Taipei business district was designed by a famous Chinese architect, I.M. Pei, with feng shui in mind. It has a rounded, flowing shape, uplifted upper floors that encourage continued success for the occupants, and even protective spirits built into the foyer as guardian statues. But Pei’s company came under fire in Hong Kong over another of his buildings, because when it comes to feng shui you can always guarantee that someone will not agree with your ideas.

Pei was asked to design a tower block to house the Bank of China, and deliberately set out to organize the best feng shui arrangements he could. The site was in a lucky location facing Hong Kong harbor, but it was also a busy area surrounded with bustling streets and sharp-edged buildings. Pei designed extensive gardens with shrubs, trees and pools to deflect the bad qi of the nearby streets. He also made the building 70 floors high, the tallest in Hong Kong, so that no other building could dwarf it. Also, the walls of the building were all glass, letting sunlight in and coincidentally functioning as gigantic demon-warding mirrors.

Perfect... except that others were not so sure. Don’t forget that this building was designed to house the Bank of China, at a time when China would soon be taking control of the colony back from the British. Some critics found the feng shui of Pei’s building very worrying, because they thought its sharp, tapering top made it look like a dagger pointing at the heart of Hong Kong, which would make for very bad qi indeed. It’s one of the major problems with feng shui, sometimes you just can’t win. (To be continued)