Historical Development of Feng Shui in China

Feng Shui's Course In Hong Kong

Hong Kong goes its own ways. Not entirely, of course, and obviously much less so since 1997, but it retains a certainly cultural autonomy. One way in which Hong Kong has continued traditional beliefs and practices that have faded on the mainland is the degree of dedication to the practices of feng shui. There are several reasons why Hong Kong has maintained such traditions. Some of these arise from the fact that islands tend to be both conservative and independent, holding to traditions as a strength.

Mainland Chinese officials see their current and future strength as arising from their economic modernization, as essentially arising from their flight from tradition. Hong Kong, while certainly attached to economic prosperity and legally a part of China, has because of its geography also maintained an attachment to its past.

Hong Kong, no matter how many legal times it has to the mainland, will always be foremost an island. And a substantial part of its identity as an island (and its people as an island people) is a understanding of the relationship between people and land based on the principles of feng shui.

The concept and practice of feng shui can be applied anywhere, but it has special relevance to islands. The term itself refers to qualities of qi, which is an essential element of life. In a Jin Dynasty text on the proper rituals for the burial of the dead, the poet Guo Pu writes that qi is scattered by the wind but then retained or recalled when it meets the water. He wrote: "Qi rides the wind and scatters, but is retained when encountering water" (Pu). This sense of balance in opposition is, of course, true throughout China and is represented not simply in the idea of feng shui but in any number of other oppositions.

Heaven is contrasted with earth, for example, for millennia in China, as have more abstract concepts like roundness and squareness. There is also the entire concept of yin and yang, although this is not precisely parallel to feng shui. Yin and yang represent a more complex relationship between growth and decline. Yin and yang contain each other, feeding into each other like the snake biting its tail that become the symbol for infinity.

Feng shui can also describe a state in which decline and growth can occur at different times, slightly out of phase with each other. Feng shui entails balance and harmony, but at a slight disconnect. Islands (for example) are built up and then later they decline, and sometime later near or far away another island is born from the same forces and then it too declines.

The following describes the ways in which feng shui and yin and yang run parallel to each other:

Since last month a number of preliminary feng shui studies have begun [for the Bank of China] and much of the news was not good. While the building will stand on the most propitious geological line in the colony, some masters believe the triangular elements of the structure spell bad luck. Reason: the acute, pointy edges would slice through the yin-yang, or cosmic balance, thus pricking and angering unwary spirits, who would then direct their anger at buildings toward which the triangles pointed.

Though the unauthorized feng shui readings seem to indicate that the Bank of China would gain at the expense of others, the psychic note of aggression was far from the comradeship Peking hoped to project. The building, in short, would anger not only the spirits but the neighbors. (Chua-Eoan, Stoner. & Wong, 1987).

The following describes the ways in which the centrality of the concept of complementarity runs through traditional Chinese culture, beginning thousands of years ago, possibly as long ago as the Neolithic.

Yin and Yang is at the very heart of Feng Shui and Chinese philosophy. It is the essence of nature, where everything is in a perpetual state of change, moving from one extreme to the other to create equilibrium or universal balance. To illustrate yin and yang as universal balance, we will say that yang is daylight and yin, darkness. Our planet is always half in sunlight and half in darkness and when the sun rises to its meridian, a yin/yang shadow is cast upon the Earth (Yin and yang).

That opposites and balance should be so important in Chinese culture and history should not be surprising. Balance as a fundamental concept runs through most and indeed arguably nearly all cultures. All of life is an experience of growth and decline, of endless births that lead to endless deaths.

The human body, as well as the energy that surrounds us in our homes and offices is also in a state of rise and decline; energy is never constant or fixed and Traditional Chinese Feng Shui takes this perpetual interaction into account (Yin and Yang).

Feng shui is linked to yin and yang in that both arise from and reinforce the essential dualism of Chinese society, in which the idea of balance between opposites always takes the upper hand. For people in Hong Kong, one of the most important cultural traditions or scripts that touches on the balance of opposites it the one that allows them to understand their land is feng shui.

The fact that Hong Kong is an island is essential to remember when trying to understand how it has helped nurture traditional beliefs and practices about feng shui not only because its geography makes its residents connect to the land in different ways but also because its island nature has set the history of Hong Kong apart from that of other regions of China. The practice of feng shui was suppressed during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s (as was so much of traditional Chinese practice). During this period of rejection of feng shui on the Mainland, Hong Kong was still British. While Hong Kong was never wholly British, of course, the relationship between Hong Kong and the more ancient aspects of Chinese culture was altered forever by its relationship with the British.

Both while Hong Kong has legal affiliations with Great Britain and since its return to full Chinese legal status, the part of it that has been and is British allowed its residents to define themselves more fully as Chinese. This sounds contradictory, but the experience of the residents of Hong Kong is not unlike that of many immigrants. They are affiliated legally with the country that they have emigrated to but they are always also aware of the fact that they are losing their original identity.

Hong Kong residents by the fact of their legal separation (however narrow) and their cultural separation (often wider and still ongoing) have been very much aware of the potential for each of them to lose her essential Chinese-ness. And just like the Chinese immigrant to America who makes sure that her children learn her mother tongue, the residents of Hong Kong have as a whole been much more conscious than those living in the Mainland about what it means to be Chinese.

Mainland Chinese residents never have to worry about how Chinese they are (or at least they have not had to until the most recent generation and the lures that are drawing them towards Western behavior, habits, and beliefs). Residents of Hong Kong have had to define what it means to be Chinese even as they have been perceived both by some on the Mainland and by residents of other countries as not really Chinese.

For some Hong Kongese, this marginal, between-the-lines status of Chinese but not-quite-really-Chinese has been something to be denied or ignored. But for others, this cultural position between China and the West, between the earth and the sea has provided important psychological room to combine old and new, East and West. One of the key areas in which such a blending has come about is in the Hong Kong way of practicing and preserving feng shui.

The fact that Hong Kong had a very different political status and far more freedom than did other regions in China during the 1960s through its return to China in 1997 meant that Hong Kong residents could continue traditional practices. However, it also meant that Hong Kong was more open to the West than were other parts of China during the second half of the twentieth century. This meant that while there was greater freedom in terms of the say that the Mainland government had in internal Hong Kong practices, these same traditional practices were coming into contact with the very different traditions of the West.

This contact with the West has affected the practice of feng shui in important ways that will be discussed later. However, for the moment it is important to note that while there is always give and take between two cultures whenever they come into contact with each other, when these cultures are very different there may actually be less of an exchange of cultural ideas and practices than in the case when the cultures are relatively similar.

Those aspects of a culture that is very different might seem to be exotic and exciting and therefore attractive on a very basic human level. However, while this is something that can occur sometimes, it can also be the case that when people of one culture encounter something from a very different culture then there can be a pulling apart in an attempt to protect the traditions of each.

Feng shui is certainly not the only Chinese tradition that Hong Kong has continued to honor in a way that helps to define the relationship between the island and the Western world. Hong Kong capitalizes on a range of traditions that have long since died out on the Mainland and that are tied closely to ancient heritage of China, to the same distant past that gave rise to feng shui. These include a celebration of the sea goddess Tin Hau's birthday. The island festival is held to ask for good fishing in the upcoming year and fishers decorate their boats with signs of devotion to the goddess.

Hong Kong residents also celebrate the birthday of Lord Buddha, something that has been banished quite effectively from the atheist Mainland. The island also celebrates the birthday of Confucius, a figure that has as much importance to the Mainland as to Hong Kong but whose birth is more vibrantly celebrated in Hong Kong. And yet another celebration that is more widely celebrated on Hong Kong than in Mainland China are autumn and spring festivals in which families visit the graves of ancestors and share food among the living and the dead.

Hong Kong residents have been able to use these festivals and observances as well as similar ones in many ways as an export to sell its Chinese-ness to the West. However, it has tended to use feng shui as a way of protecting itself against the West.

Even Mickey Mouse & #8230;

In the case of Hong Kong and the power of traditional feng shui, Western traditions have at least at times been beaten down by the power of traditional acknowledgement of qi. Feng shui cannot be co-opted in the same way that the martial arts can, but it can be used to sell a vision of "Chinese-ness" that is attractive and highly marketable. Hong Kong Chinese have a distinct advantage over Mainland Chinese in balancing the traditions of feng shui with marketing it to the West because of its long-standing position between East and West.

Even Disneyland, that most American of companies, was very careful to note the importance of feng shui to Hong Kong culture. The company made "special adjustments and incorporation of Chinese principles" so that the park could "retain sensitivity to Chinese culture, its continuous observation as well as concern towards environment, geography and health."

The location of the Hong Kong Disneyland Park has been carefully planned to take advantage of the surrounding area including the auspicious hill formations nearby. In addition, by realizing feng shui principle to promote success, the locations of the park entrance and the entrances to the individual attractions have been adjusted to maximize energy and guest flow. Fountains are also placed throughout the park to accumulate good fortune (Disneyland Hong Kong Feng Shui).

The above citation suggests the ways in which feng shui occupies a fascinating position in Hong Kong. It is both enough of a serious element of the island's sense of culture and sense of self to be able to create the delicate balance that has been necessary to sustain traditional practices, including that of feng shui.

Tilting Toward the Mainland

One of the most interesting questions regarding feng shui in Hong Kong is what the effect of the handover in 1997 has had on the ways in which Hong Kongese have balanced Eastern and Western traditions and appetites. Certainly it is true that Hong Kong has become more Chinese in the last fifteen years. This is generally true of life on the island.

The "disappearance" of the Western "ex-pats" and the arrival of more mainland Chinese has had a subtle change in the look and feel of Hong Kong. According to some observers, its international quality has declined, while its Chinese cultural attributes are on the rise.

In addition, a significant number of executive positions in the private sector that previously were filled by Western "ex-pats" are now being done by mainland immigrants. Meanwhile, at the other end of the income spectrum, many jobs previously done by Hong Kong Chinese are being taken by recent mainland immigrants as well (Martin, 2007).

It seems possible and even likely that as Hong Kong becomes "more Chinese" in the sense that the island becomes more oriented to the Mainland and less to the West, it is likely that feng shui will come to be seen and utilized differently than it has over the century and a half that it was under British control.

As noted above, Hong Kong has clung to some traditional practice more closely than has the Mainland because Hong Kong residents are in some cultural and psychological ways in the position of immigrants. If this argument holds true, it would be the case that as Hong Kong becomes more and more like Mainland China (in part because it is and will continue to be) increasingly inhabited by Mainlanders.

There is considerable concern that the immigration of Mainlanders to Hong Kong has altered the economy of the island. But there is also concern (albeit it at a lower level) that the island's culture is also being changed:

The perceived influx of mainland Chinese at both the top and bottom of the income distribution is causing some tensions within the Hong Kong Chinese population. Much as the United States experienced with its waves of immigrants, some people in Hong Kong view the "newcomers" with suspicion.

This suspicious attitude towards mainland immigrants was reinforced by the Tung administration when it released rather dire predictions of the effects of the arrival of mainland children and their families during the "right of abode" controversy

It is not uncommon to hear claims in Hong Kong that mainland immigrants are responsible for a rise in crime, the decline in the quality of education, and a general loss of good manners in Hong Kong since the Handover (Martin, 2007).

One of the arenas in which tension can arise between the old and the new populations of Hong Kong is over the use of feng shui.

The previous example of the ways in which the Disney corporation used feng shui to win favor from the population of Hong Kong by incorporating some feng shui elements. It is difficult to say how sincere the Disney company was in incorporating fend shui elements. It is certainly possible that officials at this park believe in the efficacy of feng shui, or believe that their guests are serious advocates of the philosophy. However, it seems even more likely that Disney officials flaunted their fairly minimal of use of feng shui as a way of selling Chinese-ness to overseas visitors.