Fengshui and Western Idiocy
The ancient art of Chinese geomancy, also known as fengshui, has taken a trendy turn over the past few years in expat circles and many Western practitioners are flocking to Beijing’s biggest monuments for lessons in fengshui. (China Daily)
OK, first of all, I think it is known as fengshui, also known as geomancy. Slight, yet important, distinction.
Anyhow, this is a silly and throwaway post, but what the heck, everyone is still recovering from the holidays and probably don’t want to read up on anything serious today. That being said, this post includes some rather incendiary statements, so at least it isn’t boring.
I’ve always been amused with Western folks who romanticize Chinese culture to the extent that they buy in to local religious practices, fengshui, and other kinds of silliness.
One subset of this is the recent Western fascination with Traditional Chinese Medicine. However, there is enough actual, provable know-how with TCM to separate it from the wholly superstitious stuff. In other words, there is a lot of value in TCM, once you strip out the mumbo jumbo underpinnings.
Too bad some people equate fengshui with TCM:
Like acupuncture, Bily said many Westerners are quick to criticize the effectiveness of fengshui, claiming it’s simply superstition.
He responds to them by saying it doesn’t matter if you believe in it or not as long as you can see the results.
The results!?! Yes, I suppose that if the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube were not placed and constructed with fengshui principles in mind, those buildings might have spontaneously combusted or imploded during the Olympics. Tragedy avoided – results obvious.
Listen, it’s great if you are into Chinese art, language, music and other bits o’ culture. That’s fine and dandy. But to buy in to scams like this, well, it’s just sad:
James Jay, CEO of the fengshui resource center, Feng Shui Designs, and his wife Helen Jay have been offering yearly pilgrimages or “Fengshui immersion programs” to Beijing for the last decade.
The program, which costs roughly 23,000 yuan ($3,393), offers to guide fengshui novices through China as they learn the ins and outs of the spiritual practice by visiting Beijing’s biggest monuments.
“We analyze places like the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Ming Tombs, and so on for their fengshui significance,” said Jay. Fengshui is the philosophy of how spatial arrangements, in most cases furniture, relates to the patterns of yin and yang and the flow of qi.
At the end of the 15-day journey, students are given a certificate of “completion of Fengshui immersion in China.”
OK, someone out there will no doubt say, hey wait a minute. This guy has 10+ experience and is actually teaching people valuable and legitimate information.
Sure. And if the tour consists only of teaching people why certain monuments were built a certain way (i.e. art and architecture), that’s actually very interesting. But I suspect there is more to it, not just explaining the background and motivations of the folks who built these things.
Even worse are the so-called consultants out there who prey on wannabe trendy idiots who pay incredible sums to someone for advice on where to put their furniture. Egad.
The best part of this China Daily article is the following warning:
The boost in popularity has led to an increased amount of people claiming they are consultants, but in reality, they have only taken a two-month course[.]
Ha! Yeah, because the guy who has studied for 30 years about the proper mystical placement of furniture will give better advice than the novice charlatan. Good to know.
I expect that someone will send me an indignant email that says either: 1) you shouldn’t make fun of Western idiots without mentioning all the fengshui adherents in China itself; or 2) you shouldn’t be making fun of ancient Chinese wisdom/China’s cultural heritage.
I will admit that I shouldn’t single out Western lunatics. I admire these consultants for being clever con artists, but for all their customers in the West, in China, or anywhere in the world — well, let’s just say that I don’t have a very high opinion of your “faith”.
I’m sure you’re thinking: “But this is China’s cultural heritage you’re bashing! That’s offensive and insensitive.”
Guilty on both counts. If it would make anyone feel better, I could just as easily rail against fortune tellers, astrologists, Christians, crystal worshippers, pork avoiders, or Zoroastrians. However, this is a China-related blog and that would be off topic. Suffice it to say, though, that I am an equal opportunity insensitive asshole.
I’ve been reading way too much Richard Dawkins lately.
UPDATE: Speaking of idiocy, here is a column about a recent Pew Center study whose results are both amusing and mildly disturbing:
Entitled “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” the report points out that many Americans are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs” and that “sizable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups” said that they have had supernatural experiences, like encountering ghosts.
You know, bad fengshui may be the cause of that cantankerous disposition of yours. Perhaps a few old coins and a quick rearrangement of your office furniture is in order.
Hey that cantankerous disposition is what makes China Hearsay such a good read. Lets not give him any advice that may change what we read here.
At their base, so much of the ancient cultural insights are at worst pragmatic. When abstracted from their respective historical context, the pragmatic aspect seems to be the first loss. For example, feng1shui3 teaches that the door of a building should face south, which makes perfect sense if the bitter cold wind originates from the north. But by abstracting such common-sense recommendations and applying a near-religious perspective quickly obscures whatever truths they may have originally held.
Well said. I would add that it would also follow that one can/should abandon such practices, or at least not follow them blindly, once their practical benefits have ended. For example, some say that my ancestors forbade the eating of pork because of parasitic diseases. Made sense a couple thousand years ago, but is of zero value today in most countries.
Once the context of religion is firmly in place, the logical bases of such practices fall away, and with the passage of time we are left with increasingly bizarre rituals.
fengshui is a stupid thing, purely superstition. Only a very very very small percentage of Chinese believe fengshui. Why spend time learning stupid thing? I don’t get it.
Agree with Matthew. Stan’s cantankerous disposition is a net positive for hsi blog followers.
Re Fengshui, much of it is superstition.
However one might want to consider that in the ancient past science and magic are interchangeable. Human psychology are often couched in mythical terms. In that light, some of the basic guiding principles of FengShui, such as the arrangement of furnitures, windows and lighting, direction the door’s facing — they do make sense.
Take lighting, I sometimes travel for projects, and as consultant often am stuffed into miserable rat-holes, which made one more acutely aware of need for good office furniture arrangements. I was once with a colleague working in a windowless office jammed with a couple of desks, which sucked the energy out of all of us. One colleague got so depressed he even asked the client to pay for a sun-lamp. FengShui in this context would offer suggestions on where perhaps to add some lights, perhaps a diff arrangement of desks, etc..
I sometimes think of FengShui as traditional best practices passed down. However, generally speaking, because of Chinese’s emphasis on continuity and tradition, and the lack of a western-equivalent of a Renaissance, FengShui has not been updated with modern terms. But FengShui can be argued as a study in human psychology and environmental studies.
Which does not mean there aren’t many scammers out to con willing schmucks out of their money.
I am not a FengShui practitioner btw, nor do I work in the industry. Just wanna toss in my 2 cents (+ inflationary adjustments).
eastern-equivalent of a Renaissance, that is.
A lot of people I know are into reiki and similar, a lot of them expect me to be into it because I eat organically grown food and have time for herbal medicine, especially Ayurvedic.
Please leave off the Dawkins. The problem with people like him is that they use straw man arguments (most importantly, defining faith as blind belief.).
@Tian. Fengshui as “best practice” is probably right. My sister’s architect was into the Indian equivalent, and she says that a lot of the rules make a lot of sense once you work out the reason for the rule.
The frequency with which I find myself in complete agreement with you is truly scary, Stan. It’s high time I bought you a beer. (Dawkins! Nice. Atheist fist-bump!) Email me to collect on that beer.
It seems the people that dismiss such things are those that have not taken the time to learn such things, as that is the path most people take, the one of least resistance?
I would be more open to this line of argument if there were actual scientific studies on this subject, with results that could be confirmed/tested. Just learning the rules of Fengshui is like studying astrological relationships — there’s no science there.
This is why I contrasted TCM with fengshui. TCM has been studied by doctors all over the world, and many methods/treatments/drugs have proven effective (for reasons why can understand). If fengshui can rise to that level, I will take it seriously.
Feng Shui is, among other things, the understanding and manipulation of the energy of the Universe. Science has come to know matter is made of molecules, made of atoms, made of quarks, made of??? It gets fuzz here but science has the uncertainty principle and the principle of complimentaryity to help explain this. So whatever the fundimental composition of matter is, it exists in a state of uncertainty between it’s complimentary aspects of time and energy. Science recognizes that at the most fundimental level they are dealing with field equations of some sort. Feng Shui recognizes this energy and enhances the benefit through the use of color, placement of objects, and the enhancement of personal energies through balance and harmony. Call it the cosmological constant, Higgs field, or the GOD force, as you like, and it may well be stupid, but I’ll learn about it first. If I do deside it is all stupid, it will be an educated opinion. Have a CHIfull day all.