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Nantai : 2006
Feng Shui is central
to Chinese thought & culture, and forms an integrated and coherent way
of looking at the world.
Not according to the
intriguingly named Ole Bruun, an academic who has just produced a
crucial study1 on :
v
How Feng Shui really
operates in China now
v
How Feng Shui’s
profile in China was dramatically raised by European
imperialism and its Opium Wars, around a
hundred and forty years ago2
v
Feng Shui under the
Cultural Revolution, and
v
How China is
re-importing Feng Shui from people like us
v
The role of hospital
closures, and…
v
Why the Chinese
authorities have opposed the tradition for centuries
I’m (not) in Heaven…
Traditional Feng Shui
: Yang. Top Down. An ordered universe. Made up of…
1.
Heaven
2.
The Will of Heaven
3.
The Emperor (where
2 and 3 are the same, and)
4.
Everyone Else (…is
completely unimportant).
Conformity is all.
Having the temerity to engage a Feng Shui consultant implies you’ve made
the cardinal error of thinking that your existence, thoughts and
aspirations have any value whatsoever. Having a consultation
almost becomes a subversive act3.
So for a very long
time Feng Shui was heavily sat on. And then along came the
Imperialists, and their religious chums. The Jesuits were there
first, and as the western powers strengthened their hold over the
country the local squirearchy became somewhat narked about the influence
of the pinkoes. They looked for something that would incite the
locals to become revolting, along the lines of “they’re
stealing our jobs/women/culture”, and Feng Shui was chosen as the icon, rather like a
fight for the defence of the Welsh language, or the image of the
Spitfire circling lazily above the cornfields whilst the sound of
Jerusalem echoes across the landscape.
This is the period
when many western projects were stymied because the railway and/or the
telegraph poles were cutting through the landscape and killing the
dragon. Whatever the geomantic truth of such statements, they
served their purpose. Feng Shui became a point of resistance
around which the troops rallied. It received official blessing.
The Feng, it Fengeth
every day
Fast forward to the
twentieth century and the movement for independence. Feng Shui
flourished. And then came The Commies. Book Burnings. Mass
liquidations. Nothing that was not in line with the line was
tolerated. Popular religion was wiped out. Feng Shui
practitioners were subjected to terrible times…
…but barefoot doctors
came, and health for all…
…but then The Feng
changed again. The market was not such an evil thing after all.
In fact, its all quite, er, progressive. Rural health provision
collapsed, and all sorts of quacks emerged to fill the gap. Of
course that’s China and nothing like that could happen here. In the
market place Feng Shui has begun to flourish once again.
Mountain Man
Bruun undertook
extensive fieldwork in two Chinese provinces.
“Longquan, meaning
Dragon Spring, is an area southeast of Chengdu, the provincial capital
of Sichuan…where the fertile Chengdu plain borders the scenic Longquan
mountains
“The houses now
commonly (being) built have much the same layout as many traditional
wooded houses, only the rooms are likely to be bigger. The main
entrance, which is not necessarily facing south in the ‘forms’ school of
fengshui dominating here.
All the practitioners
are chaps. The consultation ~ Seeing FengShui ~ is clearly
described by Bruun (p148) and I have now incorporated the
killing of a cock and associated blood-sprinkling into all my
consultations. Grave location remains a serious matter.
The House of Flying
Compasses
Bruun’s other field
study was in Jiangsu, where…
“The (compass)
‘directions’ school of Fengshui practised here allows for less
flexibility in housebuilding and tends to give rise to much more serious
conflicts” (than in Longquan).
Bruun emphasises the
differing elements of Fengshui, and quotes the top practitioner in
Jiangsu as saying ~ when asked why a particular consultation was
successful ~
‘Oh, I cannot tell
you, there are so many things. You know, fengshui is like poetry ~
it has symbols, classics, people, nature and more ~ you cannot know
exactly how it works…But of course, it takes a long time to learn, and
still you see only the surface’
The unwritten books
Bruun points out that
there have been a negligible number of studies of Feng Shui by academia,
even within China. The existing studies are listed in his book and are,
like the book itself, essential reading for anyone with a real interest
in Feng Shui.
Ole Bruun has done us
all a fantastic service. His book has over 300 pages, and only a
flavour can be conveyed here. But it tastes wonderful.
1
‘Feng Shui in China : Geomantic Divination between State Orthodoxy and
Popular Religion’
by Ole Bruun. 300 pages. Hardback. Nias Press. (ISBN 87-91114-79-9)
www.niaspress.dk Forty Nine imperialist dollars from
www.amazon.com
2
…fengshui gradually became a convenient weapon in the struggle
against foreign penetration
(p
40)
3…Chinese
state ideology has customarily placed the strongest emphasis on a
collective spirit as the basis for an orderly society and demanded that
the individual submit himself to a society’s grand scheme and work for
its common good. Fengshui, on the other hand, is really designed
as a celebration of the self. It depicts a discrete, personalised
and anthropocentric universe, in radical opposition to any communitarian
ideology (p220)
26.3.2006
Ced Jackson
Ced@FengShuiFutures.com |