46 Fun Facts About Feng Shui

What do the two words feng shui literally mean?

Wind-water: a classic credited to a 4th-century poet taught that the life force scatters when it rides the wind and is held where it meets water, and the phrase stuck as the name of the whole practice.

What is the name of the cosmic current or energy that feng shui seeks to direct?

Qi, literally 'breath' or 'air', is the same life force that acupuncture needles are meant to set flowing freely through the body; feng shui tries to do the same for a house or a landscape.

Feng shui is traditionally described as a form of what?

Geomancy, literally 'earth divination': the word first belonged to an unrelated art of the Arab world and medieval Europe, reading fortunes from a handful of earth thrown down or dots marked in sand.

The valley of thirteen imperial tombs near Beijing, chosen by feng shui, holds emperors of which dynasty?

Ming: the Yongle Emperor, builder of the Forbidden City, picked the mountainside site for his own tomb, and a dozen of his successors followed him there.

Trigrams from the bagua surround a yin-yang symbol on the flag of which country?

South Korea: the design dates from 1882, was outlawed through decades of Japanese rule and came back as the national flag in 1948.

Before it guided ships, the compass served Chinese diviners, whose first version is said to have been a lodestone carved into what?

A spoon, in the traditional account: set on a smooth bronze plate, the lodestone swung round to settle along one fixed line, a fortune-teller's device for centuries before sailors steered by compass.

Feng shui followers choosing a lucky day to move house traditionally consult which kind of book?

An almanac: the Tung Shing marks each day as good or bad for weddings, funerals, moving in or signing contracts, so in feng shui the timing can count for as much as the placement.

What is the traditional feng shui compass called?

Luopan: its needle sits at the centre of a turning disc ringed with bands of formulas, and it descends from the first compasses, which Chinese diviners used for centuries before any sailor steered by one.

Feng shui's ideas of yin and yang and vital energy are rooted in which Chinese philosophical tradition?

Daoism: its early adepts held that a vital force runs through the body and worked out breathing exercises to steer it in search of long life, and feng shui looks for the same force flowing through the land.

Why was Guo Pu, the 'father of feng shui', executed in 324?

He failed to produce a favourable omen: the warlord Wang Dun, planning to seize the throne, had him divine the outcome, and killed him in a rage when the reading came out badly.

Which giant observation wheel reversed its direction of spin in 2008 after feng shui masters said it was carrying fortune away?

The Singapore Flyer at first turned away from the financial district toward the open sea; after four months of study and a six-figure bill, it was made to turn toward the city instead.

What are the five elements, or wuxing, of Chinese thought?

Metal, earth, fire, water, wood: each is held to give rise to the next and to overcome another, so the set works less like a list of substances than a cycle of change.

Yin and yang are said to have first meant what?

The shady and sunny sides of a hill: yin was the slope in shadow and yang the slope in sunlight, and the pair later grew to cover every matched opposite, from cold and heat to night and day.

How many trigrams make up the bagua?

Eight: each trigram stacks three lines, each either broken for yin or unbroken for yang, and two choices made three times give exactly eight patterns.

In the old Chinese picture of the cosmos behind feng shui, heaven is round and the earth is which shape?

Square: the idea is commonly said to explain China's old cash coins, round like the sky with a square hole for the earth at the centre.

On what did the Lo Shu number pattern appear, according to legend?

A turtle's shell: in the legend, the turtle climbed out of the flooding Luo River while the hero Yu was trying to drain it, its back dotted with the numbers one to nine in a three-by-three grid.

Which celestial animal guards the east in Chinese cosmology?

Azure Dragon: a Neolithic tomb found with a shell mosaic of a dragon on the east side of the body and a tiger on the west suggests the pairing is more than six thousand years old.

During the Cultural Revolution, which movement beat feng shui masters and burned their books?

The Red Guards: Mao's student militants attacked practitioners and burned their manuals, and only after he died in 1976 did the official attitude begin to soften.

Which fifth creature, placed at the centre, sometimes joins the four celestial animals of Chinese cosmology?

The Yellow Dragon stands for the centre and, in legend, is the shape the Yellow Emperor took to rise to heaven at the end of his life.

Which video game series rewards players for arranging furniture by feng shui colours?

Animal Crossing: its inspectors score a home higher when furniture of the right colour sits on the right side of a room, and the player's luck with money and rare finds improves too.

Which Vietnamese imperial city was sited according to feng shui beside the Perfume River, with a hill in front as its 'screen'?

Huế: the Nguyen emperors made it the capital of a united Vietnam in 1802, and it stayed the seat of their court until the last of them, Bao Dai, gave up the throne in 1945.

The hill behind the Forbidden City was piled up from earth dug for what?

The moat: the spoil was piled into Jingshan, a hill about 45 metres high at the palace's back, because feng shui favours a home sheltered by high ground behind it.

Which Japanese city, founded in 794 as Heian-kyō, was laid out on Chinese feng shui principles?

Kyoto was modelled on the Chinese capital Chang'an, on a site whose hills and rivers were read as matching the four guardian animals of the compass points, and it stayed Japan's capital until 1868.

How many rooms does the Forbidden City traditionally claim to have?

9,999: the traditional tally stops just short of ten thousand, but a modern survey counted 8,886 bays of rooms in the 980 buildings that survive.

What are the two main branches of feng shui?

Form and Compass: the older Form school reads the lie of hills and rivers, while the Compass school, which arose once the magnetic compass was in use, works from directions and astrology.

Feng shui master Tony Chan was jailed in 2013 for forging which document in a bid for a Hong Kong tycoon's fortune?

Her will: Chan claimed that Nina Wang, once Asia's richest woman, had left him her whole estate, but a judge called the signature 'a highly skilled simulation' and he was sentenced to 12 years.

During the Cultural Revolution, feng shui was classed as one of what?

The Four Olds were old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits, and the campaign against them began by renaming streets and shops wholesale.

After 1949, China's Communist government officially condemned feng shui as what?

A feudal superstition: the charge outlived Mao, and Party officials found consulting feng shui masters have since been dismissed from their posts for it.

Which theme park, opened in 2005, turned its main gate on feng shui advice?

Hong Kong Disneyland: Disney built local customs into the park to head off a cultural backlash, and also bent the entrance walkway so that good energy would not flow straight out to sea.

Which Hong Kong skyscraper is nicknamed the vertical knife by feng shui critics?

Bank of China Tower: its sharp edges and crossed braces drew complaints from feng shui practitioners, and its architect changed some of the design before building began.

Feng shui advice put what on the roof of the round Hopewell Centre, a tower said to resemble a candle or cigarette?

A swimming pool: the cure matched the fear, a round pool set on top of the skyscraper to douse any flames its shape might invite.

Who designed the 1985 HSBC Building in Hong Kong, famous for its feng shui-friendly design?

Norman Foster's tower looks out over an open plaza, with nothing built between it and the harbour, and an unbroken view of the sea is held to bring a building prosperity.

Stephen and Stitt, the bronze lions guarding HSBC's Hong Kong headquarters, were named after whom?

Two of the bank's managers: Stephen roars and Stitt rests, said to match the two bankers' characters, and passers-by stroke the statues' paws in the hope that luck will rub off.

Which Jesuit may have been the first European to describe feng shui masters and their underground dragons?

Matteo Ricci thought the practice absurd, asking how a family's safety could hang on which way a door opened or on which side rain fell into a courtyard.

Which magic duo sent several feng shui consultants to the same house for their sceptical TV series?

Penn and Teller found that each consultant read the same home differently, which they took as proof that the practice has no consistent method behind it.

Which tycoon did the sceptic Robert Carroll name as paying feng shui masters to say which way his doors should hang?

Donald Trump: Carroll's complaint was that feng shui in the West had shrunk to interior decorating, with self-styled masters charging hefty sums for the advice.

In popular feng shui, which object framed by the bagua trigrams is hung over a door to deflect bad energy?

A mirror: the trigram-framed kind is meant to bounce harmful energy back where it came from, a cheap remedy for households that can't pay a consultant.

In Quezon City's deadly Ozone Disco fire of 1996, which feature, reportedly chosen for good feng shui, trapped the crowd?

An inward-opening exit door: a survivor said such doors were fitted because they were believed to bring money in, and the court found the club's only exit swung the wrong way for a fleeing crowd.

Which rebellion saw feng shui used to justify attacks on missionaries and colonial infrastructure?

Boxer: church buildings were blamed for a drought on the grounds that their siting broke feng shui rules, and the foreigners' railways and telegraph lines were accused of the same offence.

Which US president's visit to China is credited with sparking American interest in feng shui?

Richard Nixon went in 1972, and the American curiosity about Chinese culture that followed carried feng shui with it, mostly in a simplified form sold as interior design.

On feng shui masters' advice, officials in China's Gansu province spent about $730,000 in 2009 hauling what to their county seat?

A giant boulder: the 369-ton 'spirit rock' was meant to ward off bad luck, and at its consecration the county magistrate walked toward it kowtowing every three steps.

Which way does the needle of a traditional feng shui compass point?

The south magnetic pole: the feng shui compass is read from the needle's south-seeking end, where a Western compass is read from the end that seeks north.

Feng shui legend says The Repulse Bay apartment block has what, so that dragons in the hills can reach the sea?

A huge hole: the story goes that walling the dragons off from the bay would bring bad luck, though whether the gap was really designed with them in mind is doubted.

According to legend, which primordial being first identified the trigrams of the bagua?

Fuxi, the first of China's mythical emperors, is also said to have taught his people to cook, to fish with nets and to hunt, and to have instituted marriage.

Pairs of bagua trigrams stack into the hexagrams of which ancient Chinese book?

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is consulted by casting lots to build a hexagram line by line from the bottom up, then reading the text that goes with that figure.

Guo Pu, the 'father of feng shui', also wrote a famous commentary on the Erya, the oldest surviving Chinese what?

Dictionary: Guo Pu was the leading commentator of his age on old texts, and his notes on this one and on a book of myths and monsters helped keep both in circulation.