Feng Shui Trivia
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46 free Feng Shui trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This feng shui trivia quiz covers the Chinese art of placement from Neolithic house doors to Hong Kong bank towers. The easy questions are ones anyone with a passing interest could answer: what the two words mean, the energy it seeks to direct, the pair of opposing forces at its heart, and the five elements. The harder end is for students of Chinese culture, architects and sceptics alike: the Neolithic village whose doors were aligned to a star, the Jin dynasty scholar who wrote the Book of Burial and was executed for the wrong omen, the geomantic compass with up to 40 rings, the four celestial animals of the directions, the magic square carried on a turtle's shell, the two arrangements of the eight trigrams, the artificial hill north of the Forbidden City, the Cultural Revolution's Four Olds, why Hong Kong Disneyland shifted its gate twelve degrees, the tower nicknamed the vertical knife, and the Jesuit who first described dragons under building sites. Penn and Teller, Donald Trump and the luopan get questions too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the practice, its texts and its famous buildings before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Chinese culture, architecture and Hong Kong quizzes next.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do the two words feng shui literally mean?
Wind-water
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.
Q 02What is the name of the cosmic current or energy that feng shui seeks to direct?
Qi
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.
Q 03Feng shui is traditionally described as a form of what?
Geomancy
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.
Q 04The valley of thirteen imperial tombs near Beijing, chosen by feng shui, holds emperors of which dynasty?
Ming
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.
Q 05Trigrams from the bagua surround a yin-yang symbol on the flag of which country?
South Korea
South Korea: the design dates from 1882, was outlawed through decades of Japanese rule and came back as the national flag in 1948.
Q 06Before it guided ships, the compass served Chinese diviners, whose first version is said to have been a lodestone carved into what?
A spoon
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.
Q 07Feng shui followers choosing a lucky day to move house traditionally consult which kind of book?
An almanac
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.
Q 08What is the traditional feng shui compass called?
Luopan
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.
Q 09Feng shui's ideas of yin and yang and vital energy are rooted in which Chinese philosophical tradition?
Daoism
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.
Q 10Why was Guo Pu, the 'father of feng shui', executed in 324?
He failed to produce a favourable omen
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.
Q 11Which giant observation wheel reversed its direction of spin in 2008 after feng shui masters said it was carrying fortune away?
The Singapore Flyer
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.
Q 12What are the five elements, or wuxing, of Chinese thought?
Metal, earth, fire, water, wood
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.
Q 13Yin and yang are said to have first meant what?
Q 21Which Vietnamese imperial city was sited according to feng shui beside the Perfume River, with a hill in front as its 'screen'?
Huế
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.
Q 22The hill behind the Forbidden City was piled up from earth dug for what?
The moat
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.
Q 23Which Japanese city, founded in 794 as Heian-kyō, was laid out on Chinese feng shui principles?
Kyoto
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.
The shady and sunny sides of a hill
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.
Q 14How many trigrams make up the bagua?
Eight
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.
Q 15In the old Chinese picture of the cosmos behind feng shui, heaven is round and the earth is which shape?
Square
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.
Q 16On what did the Lo Shu number pattern appear, according to legend?
A turtle's shell
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.
Q 17Which celestial animal guards the east in Chinese cosmology?
Azure Dragon
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.
Q 18During the Cultural Revolution, which movement beat feng shui masters and burned their books?
The Red Guards
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.
Q 19Which fifth creature, placed at the centre, sometimes joins the four celestial animals of Chinese cosmology?
The Yellow Dragon
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.
Q 20Which video game series rewards players for arranging furniture by feng shui colours?
Animal Crossing
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.
Q 24How many rooms does the Forbidden City traditionally claim to have?
9,999
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.
Q 25What are the two main branches of feng shui?
Form and Compass
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.
Q 26Feng shui master Tony Chan was jailed in 2013 for forging which document in a bid for a Hong Kong tycoon's fortune?
Her will
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.
Q 27During the Cultural Revolution, feng shui was classed as one of what?
The Four Olds
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.
Q 28After 1949, China's Communist government officially condemned feng shui as what?
A feudal superstition
A feudal superstition: the charge outlived Mao, and Party officials found consulting feng shui masters have since been dismissed from their posts for it.
Q 29Which theme park, opened in 2005, turned its main gate on feng shui advice?
Hong Kong Disneyland
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.
Q 30Which Hong Kong skyscraper is nicknamed the vertical knife by feng shui critics?
Bank of China Tower
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.