Feng Shui and the City: The Private and Public Spaces of Chinese Geomancy 9811608466, 9789811608469

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Feng Shui and the City The Private and Public Spaces of Chinese Geomancy

Manuela Madeddu Xiaoqing Zhang

Feng Shui and the City

Manuela Madeddu · Xiaoqing Zhang

Feng Shui and the City The Private and Public Spaces of Chinese Geomancy

Manuela Madeddu University of Liverpool Liverpool, UK

Xiaoqing Zhang Zhejiang Sci-Tech University Hangzhou, China

ISBN 978-981-16-0846-9 ISBN 978-981-16-0847-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0847-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

This book examines the ways in which Feng Shui influences built environment decision-making and outcomes. Feng Shui—also known as Chinese geomancy—is an ancient system of thought that has been used for millennia to ensure that the siting and design of settlements, buildings and other man-made objects is in accord with nature and thereby contributes to human well-being. It has been used to select favourable sites for citybuilding or to place homes and graves in greater harmony with their environment. Although the origins of Feng Shui are disputed, scholars generally agree that ancient Feng Shui developed from a mix of cosmology and divination practices. The ancient Chinese believed that their deceased ancestors would influence their fortunes, and considered the universe and nature as generators of qi (vital force). Auspicious places for different functions were identified on the basis of the availability of qi, and positioned and oriented to exploit its presence and flow. Emperors and ordinary people used Feng Shui to organise the ‘dwellings for the living’ and the ‘dwellings for the dead’, leaving an enduring imprint of their values and dispositions (or habitus ) on the Chinese landscape—their habitat (Bourdieu 2000). Feng Shui has continued to influence China’s built environment for centuries. However, the nature of this influence has altered during recent decades. The rapid urbanisation of China—spurred by economic growth and planning interventions that seek to concentrate population—has pushed many villagers into urban areas, converting them into urban consumers (Taylor v

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PREFACE

2015) and leading to both an ‘interiorisation’ and a commercialisation of Feng Shui (Madeddu and Zhang 2017). Whilst in its original rural settings Feng Shui can be considered an ‘absolute space’ (an authentic representation of belief and values, reflected in a particular social relationship with nature), through the processes of urbanisation, it arguably becomes an ‘abstract space’ (Lefebvre 1991) in which culture is appropriated and mobilised by capitalists and regulators to create synthetic spaces in which property values are elevated and relocating communities, facing unsettling change, placated. In metropolitan areas qi loses its connotation as a life force that flows through wind (feng), water (shui) and earth and is reassociated with monetary flows and the delivery of individual and corporate wealth (Coggins 2017). Urbanisation, underpinned by commercial development processes, has threatened and displaced traditional values. People have carried some of those values with them, recreating the absolute spaces of Feng Shui in the cities. But at another level, Feng Shui has been instrumentalised by the agents of urban change, generating an abstract space of domination and manipulation (Lefebvre 1991) for the purpose of pacifying communities and enhancing asset value. The distinction, however, between ‘valued absolute spaces’ and ‘devalued abstract ones’ (Molotch 1993, 893) is not entirely clear. This book analyses the enduring influence of Feng Shui on the contemporary built environment, exploring conjunctures between Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and Lefebvre’s conceptions of absolute and abstract space. It focuses on the use of Feng Shui in urban contexts and asks how the transfer of traditional geomancy from the absolute space of religion and everyday life in rural villages to the abstract space of capitalistic power and property development in metropolitan areas involves a reinvention and manipulation of the ‘original’—and arguably more ‘authentic’—values and principles that have underpinned Feng Shui for centuries. To this end, it explores the extent to which the habitus of Feng Shui influences people’s decisions and built environment outcomes in Chinese cities, further considering whether the embeddedness of Feng Shui in decision-making is subtle and cultural, influenced by social values, or pragmatic and commercial, driven by market forces and political will. These questions are explored through two in-depth case studies, which examine attitudes to Feng Shui and its impact on the built environment at different scales: from the domestic and private space of the dwelling, through commercial development projects, to the public space of the city. The case studies consider urban communities and development outputs

PREFACE

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in two areas where very different postcolonial histories and development trajectories have had contrasting implications for the application of Feng Shui: Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. London, UK Hangzhou, China

Manuela Madeddu Xiaoqing Zhang

References Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Press. Coggins, C. (2017). Commentary Response to ‘Harmonious Spaces: The Influence of Feng Shui on Urban form and Design’, by Manuela Madeddu and Xiaoqing Zhang. Journal of Urban Design, 22(6), 729–731. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Madeddu, M., & Zhang, X. (2017). Harmonious Spaces: The Influence of Feng Shui on Urban Form and Design. Journal of Urban Design, 22(6), 709–725. Molotch, H. (1993). The Space of Lefebvre. Theory and Society, 22(6), 887–895. Taylor, J. R. (2015). The China Dream Is an Urban Dream: Assessing the CPC’s National New-Type Urbanization Plan. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 20, 107–120.

Acknowledgments

Figures 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, 4.3 and 4.4 are taken from the following article: Manuela Madeddu & Xiaoqing Zhang (2017) Harmonious spaces: the influence of Feng Shui on urban form and design, Journal of Urban Design, 22:6, 709–725, DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2017.1336061. The Journal of Urban Design can be accessed at the following link: https:// www.tandfonline.com/. Figures 2.1, 2.2 and 2.5 were drawn by Sandra Mather. This book draws on the knowledge and insights of numerous built environments and Feng Shui professionals working in Guangdong and Hong Kong. We are extremely grateful for their inputs, although responsibility for any omissions or inaccuracies in this final text rests with the authors. We would also like to thank the Palgrave Pivots team, led by Joshua Pitt, for their support throughout the writing process. Finally, we would also like to thank Nick Gallent for his help with proofreading and editing.

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Contents

1

1 3 6 15 19

Feng Shui and the ‘Meaning of Space’ 1.1 What Is Feng Shui? 1.2 Feng Shui at Urban and Domestic Scales 1.3 Place/Landscape as Cultural Praxis 1.4 From Absolute to Abstract Space 1.5 Tracking the Transition from Absolute to Abstract Space Through Scales, Regulation and Urban Development References

23 28

2

The Case Studies and Research Approach 2.1 China and Hong Kong: A History of Separation 2.2 Guangdong: The Last 200 Years 2.3 Hong Kong: The Last 200 Years 2.4 Case Study Themes 2.5 Research Strategy 2.6 Fieldwork and Analysis References

35 37 41 46 52 55 57 59

3

Feng Shui in Mainland China: Guangdong Province 3.1 The Early Development of Guangdong and the Influence of Feng Shui on Its Historic Built Environment

63

65

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CONTENTS

3.2

Uses of and Attitudes Towards Feng Shui in Guangdong 3.3 The Spaces of Feng Shui in Guangdong 3.4 Feng Shui’s Transition in Guangdong References 4

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69 85 93 96

Feng Shui in the Chinese Territories: Hong Kong 4.1 The Early Development of Hong Kong and the Influence of Feng Shui on Its Historic Built Environment 4.2 Uses of and Attitudes Towards Feng Shui in Hong Kong 4.3 The Spaces of Feng Shui in Hong Kong 4.4 The Authenticity of Hong Kong’s Feng Shui References

101

Conclusions 5.1 Feng Shui’s Transition 5.2 Authenticity—Concluding Remarks References

137 139 146 148

Index

103 106 117 131 133

151

List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3

Courtyard houses in Ping Yao (Credit Anne Roberts) Guyuan Qigan mansion (Credit Yiping Dong) Ideal Feng Shui model Ancient Xi’an—the city of Chang’an Feng Shui forest at Beikeng village (Credit Yiping Dong) Zhuge village (Credit Alexis Lawrence) Location of two case studies Map of Guangdong province Guangzhou today (Credit Hanlin Wen) Colonnades at Guangzhou commercial area (Credit Hanlin Wen) Map of Hong Kong Hong Kong Today (Credit Author) Sha Tin new town (Credit David Collier) Guangzhou Museum (Credit Author) Feng Shui Pagoda, Shunde District, Guangzhou (Credit Hanlin Wen) Weiwu house in Meizhou, Guangdong (Credit Author) Illustrative drawing of doors (Credit Author) Lai Chi Wo village (Credit Graham Roach) Building with a hole, Repulse Bay (Credit Author) Repulse Bay (Credit Author)

8 9 11 13 14 15 37 44 44 45 47 47 49 71 73 75 88 104 123 124

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5

HSBC headquarters and Bank of China Tower (Credit Author) Opening outside the Tin Hau Temple and Feng Shui Lane (Credit Author)

126 129

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 4.1

Interviews (Guangdong Province) Interviews (Hong Kong)

69 107

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CHAPTER 1

Feng Shui and the ‘Meaning of Space’

Abstract Feng Shui and the City examines the past and contemporary influences of Feng Shui on Chinese built environments across three domains: domestic space, spaces of commercial development and the public realm. This opening chapter introduces the meaning and origins of Feng Shui before examining the way that places/spaces everywhere are the products of cultural praxis. Societies imprint their values onto the spaces of their dwelling: the production of space is a social process. From that position, the chapter outlines a perspective on Feng Shui and the City which uses Lefebvre’s (1991) notion of absolute and abstract space: spaces of ‘cosmic naturalness’, ‘symbolic existence’ and ‘everyday life’ versus spaces of domination and control. It is proposed that Feng Shui, as cultural referent, has transitioned from symbolism to an instrument of commodification: a proposition then tested in two cases, which set up a broader discussion of modern Feng Shui’s authenticity. Keywords Feng Shui · China · History · Absolute space · Abstract space

It is an obvious outcome of human settlement that our towns, cities and villages should come to reflect the values, beliefs, dispositions and preferences of those who make a place for themselves in the world. This reality has been noted on many occasions. Geographers, urban designers, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Madeddu and X. Zhang, Feng Shui and the City, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0847-6_1

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planners and architects frequently acknowledge this fact and those with responsibility for producing the built environment, or for regulating change, are often quick to argue for closer alignment between the values we hold dear and the proper design and arrangement of places. For example, if we prize social cohesion then we plan with that in mind, avoiding physical barriers between communities and people. Likewise, if saving the planet means travelling less, then we aim—in some instances at least—to make our cities walkable or at least to make public transport accessible to as many people as possible. These are perhaps prosaic expressions of our shared, modern and secular values—and more strongly linked to desired behaviours than deeper belief. At other times, values have taken different forms, being rooted in the spiritual and totemic, but still offering practical guidance on the proper arrangement of urban and rural places. This book examines the impact of Feng Shui on the built environment, and although this chapter introduces the deeper historic roots of this belief system, the book is mainly concerned with the here and now: the ways in which Feng Shui, at multiple scales—and particularly in the private spaces of the home and the commercial and public spaces of the city—imprints onto the arrangement of place today. It is centrally concerned with the processes that deliver that imprint, whether private or public, and whether underpinned by personal belief or by commercial rationale. It tracks a path from the absolute space of Feng Shui—a situation in which deeper beliefs shape the built environment—to an abstract space in which, to put it crudely, belief is commercialised and there is a potential loss of authenticity, as Feng Shui is cynically mobilised to placate communities facing unsettling change or as a means of harnessing development value. This all-too-simple precis of the path taken by this book is developed further in this chapter, which begins by introducing Feng Shui before examining the ways in which it has been expressed in the layout of homes and cities. We then unpack the ideas noted above— places being imprinted with cultural praxis, the transition from absolute to abstract space (borrowing heavily from Lefebvre 1991) and the question as to whether authenticity is lost during that transition. This first chapter lays the necessary foundations for a further development of method, and then detailed case studies that investigate Feng Shui’s enduring impact on Chinese cities and the channels through which that impact is delivered.

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FENG SHUI AND THE ‘MEANING OF SPACE’

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What Is Feng Shui?

Feng Shui, or Chinese geomancy, is an ancient system of thoughts underpinning the selection of favourable sites for cities, and providing a guide for the positioning of buildings, other man-made objects and graves in a harmonious relationship with their environment (Madeddu and Zhang 2017). It aims to ensure alignment between the needs—spiritual or otherwise—of humans, whether living or dead, and the configuration of their physical spaces (Bruun 2017). It originated in China centuries ago and influenced every aspect of the daily life of emperors and of ordinary people: from the arrangement of the ‘dwellings for the living’ and the ‘dwellings for the dead’, to the identification of a favourable day on which to get married and even the choice of a name for a child (Xu 1998). Feng Shui was—and remains—an integral part of the traditional Chinese way of life, which has affected ‘the way Chinese people see and treat the world’ (Feuchwang 2003, vii). ‘Feng Shui’—‘wind’ and ‘water’—is a relatively recent term, having being mentioned for the first time in the Zang Shu (The Book of Burial), written during The Eastern Jin dynasty (317 to 420 AD). The original Chinese name for the practices now associated with Feng Shui was ‘Kan Yu’ (meaning ‘Heaven’ and ‘Earth’). Records of its use are so old that according to Eitel (1873, 51) ‘it would not be exaggeration to say that […] the history of the leading ideas and practices of Feng Shui is the history of Chinese philosophy’. The origins of Feng Shui are disputed: some scholars have claimed that its practice is rooted in the worship of dead ancestors and the selection of sites for their graves in ancient China (De Groot 1897) whilst others have more recently argued that it evolved from the search, by Chinese cave dwellers, for favourable habitat, stressing that ‘house geomancy developed earlier than grave geomancy’ (Yoon 2006, 18). However, it is generally agreed that ancient practices of Feng Shui are closely tied with cosmological observation and divination. According to Bruun (2008, 11) ‘the further we go back in Chinese history, the less Feng Shui becomes separable from general cosmology such as that contained in Daoism1 and 1 Daoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy founded by Lao Zi (around 571 to 471 BC), which later rose to the status of religion (in 142 AD). It was developed from the Yi Jing (The book of Changes, around 800 BC) and was concerned with ‘the observation of nature and the discovery of its “Dao” or “Tao”, the way of human life, the way of nature, the way of ultimate reality’ (Mak and So 2015, 13).

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expressed in imperial divination’. Divination practices in ancient China were grounded in the worship of nature and ancestors. The ancient Chinese worshipped numerous gods of nature—the gods of sun, mountains, rivers, forests, earth and so on—as they perceived nature and the universe as animistic powers for generating qi 2 —a ‘vital force’ or ‘cosmic energy’ (Lip 1995; Adler 2011). These ideas, and particularly the concept of qi, are foundational to Feng Shui: it is through the modulation of qi that human environments can be harmonised, and therefore conform with, or achieve, the Daoist idea of the Dao (the ‘Way’)—the essential interconnection of everything in the universe (Mak and So 2015). Alongside this broad emphasis on harmony and connectivity, the worship of ancestors in ways that integrated them into this philosophy evolved into another critical aspect of Feng Shui. The spirits of ancestors were thought to bestow good fortune on their descendants, if treated with respect (Eitel 1873). From the start of the Western Zhou Dynasty (around 1046 BC), people paid great attention to the choice and orientation of burial sites, always placing the head of the deceased towards the north (ibid.). This careful interaction with ancestor spirits, as well as other non-human beings (such as gods and ghosts), through divination, is a trait of Daoism which is repeated in Feng Shui (Bruun 2008): the boundaries between the natural and supernatural are blurred, with adherents assuming ‘a unity and continuity between the heavens (or cosmos) – tian, the earth – di, and humans – ren’ (Coggins and Minor 2018, 7). The worship of ancestors (and the respect bestowed upon them) also had a role in reproducing political order (Bruun 2008) linking Feng Shui, in this respect, to Confucianism3 and its advocacy of sociopolitical hierarchy achieved through harmony (Weber 1951). The observation and interpretation of natural and astronomical phenomena also contributed to the development of Feng Shui. Inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells reveal that during the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1046 BC), consideration was being given to cardinal directions and wind orientation (Wei 2002) in the arrangement of farming activity 2 Many cultures reference the presence in the environment of a ‘supernatural electricity called “mana” by anthropologists’ (Emmons 1992, 40). 3 This philosophy, founded by Confucius (551 to 479 BC), taught people to follow a certain social order, assuming the need for hierarchical and unequal relationships between the ruler and the subjects and assigning to filial piety and respect for the elderly a key moral role.

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on land with low agricultural productivity (Sun et al. 2014). Settlers along the Yellow River discovered, more than four millennia ago, that locations backed by the mountains to the north and facing watercourses to the south were ideally suited to farming, being protected from cold northerly winds and affording maximum sunlight for crops (Shi 2015): floodplain soil also proved fertile and easy to turn (Mak and So 2015). Those who followed in later periods searched for similarly ‘auspicious’ configurations of natural features in other locations (Rossbach 1999). The same search for patterns was repeated in the wider universe of observable phenomenon: the cycles of day and night, life and death, the alternation of seasons, the movement and distribution of stars and planets all became correlated with events on earth. Observers noted the mathematical order of things (Eitel 1873), assigning numerical value to everything4 (Lip 1997) in an attempt to reveal the harmony of universal cycles (Bramble 2003). Interpretations often differed, resulting in a divergence of different schools of thought: indeed, ‘[…] from at least the time of neo-Confucian synthesis, several interpretations of Feng Shui have competed in China, giving rise to separate Feng Shui schools ’ (Bruun 2008, 100). The principal concern of the Form School is to identify auspicious sites within a landscape with reference to key elements (or to key objects in a built environment) whilst the Compass School prioritises directional components of a site (alongside temporal influences) using complicated calculations to inform formulaic arrangements of space (Skinner 1982). These schools, however, never completely ignored one another, becoming almost indistinguishable during the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912 AD) (Mak and So 2015) and into the modern period as Feng Shui ‘masters’ incorporate ideas from these different schools into their practice (Yoon 2006). Where once there was separation and distinctive approaches to making sense of the universe as a guide for planning the homes of the living and the dead, there is now an entanglement of form, flow and temporal patterns (Knapp 2005).

4 The earliest attempt to draw a link between the universal pattern and the working of nature is documented in the Yi Jing (The Book of Changes), which is conventionally attributed to the first of the mythic rulers of China, Fu Xi, from the time preceding the Xia dynasty (approximately 2070 to 1600 BC). It is also claimed that the book was edited by Confucius. The foundation of this book was the theory of Yin and Yang (Mak and So 2015) and, as Bruun (2008, 99) highlights, Feng Shui ‘is anchored in its perception of reality’.

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Feng Shui is rooted in a mix of cosmology, the observation of astrological patterns and the analysis of land form. In earlier periods—starting from the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1046 BC)—divination rituals and ancestor worship were the mainstays of Feng Shui practice. At first, it was just emperors, assisted by diviners, who communicated with the gods and with their ancestors when requiring advice on a variety of matters including building projects (Bruun 2008). But this practice was soon emulated by others wishing to harness cosmic energy and win good fortune: Feng Shui became ‘increasingly popularised, siphoning down from the Royal Court to the lower echelons of Chinese society’ (ibid., 11), being ‘eventually adopted as the practice of commoners’ (ibid., 15). This ‘siphoning down’ resulted in new scales of Feng Shui practice and in a broadening of interpretation. However, the Yi Jing (The Book of Changes)—again, concerned with divination—remains an essential reference for Feng Shui practice, ensuring that Chinese Geomancy offers a guide to making sense of the way that space is often arranged, at a variety of scales.

1.2

Feng Shui at Urban and Domestic Scales

The systematic application of Feng Shui began during the West Han dynasty (202 to 9 AD), developed in the Tang (618 to 907 AD) and Song (960 to 1279 AD) dynasties, and reached its peak in the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644 AD) (Zhao 2011). For China’s rulers, Feng Shui provided not only practical guidance on the siting and layout of their cities— thereby harnessing cosmic energies and laying the foundation for an enduring and stable government (Yoon 2004)—but also offered ideological guidance on how to build and sustain social hierarchy, nurture respect for authority (from Confucianism) (Weber 1951) and provide an accepted rationale for emperors’ decisions. For ordinary people, Feng Shui afforded ‘[…] a means of assuring a reasonable share of good fortune’ (Knapp 1986, 110), supporting their basic aspirations: prosperity, progeny, family well-being and the avoidance of illness and personal mishap. This broad adoption of Feng Shui ideas, across the social spectrum, contributed to the ‘exceptional beauty of positioning of farmhouses, manors, villages and cities throughout the realm of Chinese culture’ (Needham 1962, 240). Its impact on the historical built environment can therefore be detected at a variety of scales: from the intimacy of homes, to the layout of streets, to the siting and overall morphology of cities.

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The Domestic and Private Spaces of Feng Shui

The impacts of Feng Shui on domestic space are evident throughout China, in both rural and urban areas, where houses reflect elements of the ‘religious and cosmological beliefs’ of their inhabitants (Knapp 2005, 16). These impacts are so profound that, as Knapp (1999, 29) observes, ‘it is the application of Feng Shui practices by common people in determining auspicious sites for new or renovated houses that reveals most clearly the deeply rooted nature of this quest for spatial harmony’. Indeed, throughout the history of China, the majority of Feng Shui users ‘were the millions and millions of farmer households, to whom it was an integrated element in popular cosmology and religion’ (Bruun 2008, 50) and for whom Feng Shui was such an important part of their life that ‘they often gave up even their meagre resources to gain the benefits that it might provide’ (Knapp 1999, 29). Generally, ‘the Chinese dwelling represents a concrete patterning of the natural features thought necessary to ensure good feng shui’ (Knapp 1986, 114). In rural areas the layout of villages also reflects the influence of different Feng Shui Schools on domestic environments. In the more mountainous areas of the south and west of China, where the Form School was dominant, houses were placed according to important geographical features (including hills, water, vegetation and other buildings), allowing for variations in housing type and village layout. In villages close to Hong Kong, for example, the configuration of the surrounding environment has a greater bearing than the favoured south direction on buildings’ layout (Mak and So 2015). In the lowlands, where the Compass School was predominant, houses were placed according to beneficial orientations: this generated ‘more orderly and predictable’ settlements, planned with a fixed layout and with ‘less improvisation’ (Bruun 2008, 63) and where houses generally faced the ‘life-giving sun to the south’ (ibid., 64). This orientation of building towards the south was already prevalent during the Shang dynasty (1600 to 1046 BC) (Knapp 1986). Although southerly aspect can have a more prosaic rationale (ibid.), Knapp (2005) observes that even when buildings face another direction, that direction is commonly regarded as a ‘conceptual south’ with a ‘symbolic vocabulary [reorienting] the actual compass direction to an abstract direction’. Urban houses in China also reveal the influence of Feng Shui. In Beijing, for example, the courtyard house was once ‘the basic unit of

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the city’ and ‘almost everyone […], from the emperor to the common people’ resided in one (Xu 1998, 272). Its layout was set by the Form School to the extent that it represented ‘[…] a physical embodiment of the ideal Feng Shui model of landforms’ (ibid., 273), replicating forms used in overall city layout. The design of courtyard houses was also guided by the Compass School’s strictures on orientation, resulting in a particular positioning of rooms and other features (ibid.). Feng Shui therefore shaped the traditional house type, which was used throughout China and determined the design of small and large homes, from the more substantial courtyard houses of North and Northeast China to the more modest houses, with ‘sky-wells’ substituting for full courtyards, in the southern provinces (Knapp 2005; see also Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). The internal layout of a house, its size and the materials used for its construction were of paramount importance. There was some similarity between the arrangement of houses ‘for the dead’ and ‘for the living’ (Knapp 2005)—both grave sites and houses sought to maximise the capture of qi. For houses, this meant that the entrance—gate and main hall—needed to be correctly positioned. Kitchens, on the other hand, needed to be placed at the rear of a house on or in a separate building, thereby limiting exposure to the bad energy emanating from

Fig. 1.1 Courtyard houses in Ping Yao (Credit Anne Roberts)

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Fig. 1.2 Guyuan Qigan mansion (Credit Yiping Dong)

a stove chimney (Bruun 2008). Attention was also given to the height, length and width of a dwelling, as well as to its core elements (such as doors and windows), with carpenters taking care to place and size those elements correctly (Knapp 2005). Even in the humblest homes, layout and design conveyed ‘significant numbers and celestial objects’ (Bramble 2003, 10). The size of a house indicated the social position and wealth of the family—the bigger the house, the wealthier the family residing in it (Bruun 2008)—but not only because of land and build costs: peasants ‘were […] generally restrained from constructing large dwelling’ even if they became wealthier (Knapp 1986, 19). Social class divisions were also expressed through the use of materials, colours, shapes and the symbolic use of numbers: these were strictly regulated by the Zhou li (Rites of Zhou)—an ancient ritual text, written during the Zhou period (1046 to 256 BC) and considered central to Confucianism—which was interpreted as a building code. That code was rigidly followed in every dynasty in ancient China and prohibited the misuse of exceptional decorations in ordinary buildings, considering it a serious arrogation of power (Yu 2007). Only buildings erected for the emperors, for example, could use the colours gold and yellow, a double-eave roof, dragon patterns for decoration and the number nine. Moreover, whilst people from the

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middle and upper classes usually built private gardens—paying attention to their location and carefully considering the arrangement of furniture, plants, bridges and rocks—the lower class, who were less able to shape their domestic environments, often relied on the use of simple decorative objects (such as mirrors or wind chimes) to ensure the capture and effective flow of qi (Sun and Sun 2007). But irrespective of the social status of occupants, the imprint of Feng Shui could be read in the domestic and private spaces of the home, revealing a powerful link that also extended to the wider planning of cities and their public spaces. 1.2.2

The Urban and Public Spaces of Feng Shui

Chinese landscapes and cities have been so deeply influenced by Feng Shui that ‘the use of land can hardly be understood apart from it’ (Yoon 2006, 4). Selecting an appropriate location for a city was the main task of urban planning in ancient China and Feng Shui was invariably a ‘determinative factor’ in that selection (Meyer 1978, 139). It was inconceivable that a city’s location would not respect Feng Shui, as ignoring its principles would place in great jeopardy the rule of the emperor, the prosperity of the state, and the well-being of its citizens (Steinhardt 1990; Bramble 2003; Yu 2007). ‘Before laying the foundation for a new city, heaven had to be consulted’ (Steinhardt 1990, 5) to determine not only the right site but also the date for ground-breaking, alongside the ‘considerable list of [other] requirements’ that would need to be met (Bramble 2003, 9). The more important the city, the greater the effort expended on ensuring ‘its harmonious location and arrangement’ (Meyer 1978, 138); ‘no expense was spared to ensure that the city conformed to traditional design principles’ (Bramble 2003, 9). The ancient capital cities of Beijing, Nanjing, Luoyang, Xi’an, Kaifeng and Hangzhou, in particular, were carefully sited in accordance with astronomical phenomena and were therefore imbued with spiritual meaning: people living in such cities ‘could truly feel they and their nation were at one with the cosmos’ (Bramble 2003, 28). Their locations and layouts were also set in relation to landscape features (such as mountains, hills, water courses and empty spaces). Although the application of Feng Shui principles are most visible in imperial capitals (Knapp 1986), Mak (1998, 87) observes that ‘most of the major cities in China conform to the criteria of the ideal Feng Shui model’, being located in accordance to

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precise rules which follow those of the ancient settlers of the Yellow River (Fig. 1.3). Bruun (2008), however, disputes the rigidity of adherence to dogma, highlighting that contradiction with, or deviation from, core principles was possible. For example, the first four capitals were built in conformity with the aforementioned Zhou li (Rites of Zhou), which, although sharing much with Feng Shui’s ‘cosmological order’, actually predates it and, in parts, contradicts it (Meyer 1978). The Zhou li stipulated that cities had to be precisely oriented according to a north–south axis, with their streets arranged along a regular grid and their walls forming an exact square and having three gates on each of the eastern, southern and western sides; the location of the central palace and markets were also precisely determined

Fig. 1.3 Ideal Feng Shui model

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along the main axes so that cities were perfectly ordered as a ‘coherent cosmological symbol’ (Bruun 2008, 31). Although the ‘cosmologically ideal shape of the Zhou city […] sometimes was altered to a rectangle’ (Knapp 1986, 11), this scheme was replicated in later cities as it provided a way for the emperor to ‘display his legitimized position as both ruler and guardian of traditions’ without challenging the ‘imperial past’ (Steinhardt 1990, 4)—see Fig. 1.4. It has therefore been claimed that modern analysis has, to some extent, exaggerated the impact that Feng Shui had on ancient urban planning and design. Bruun (2008, 31) suggests that with regard to the early planning of cities ‘the application of Feng Shui may figure more in the retrospective writings of later scholars than in the original choice of a city site’, highlighting that it is ‘[…] only after Feng Shui is maturing in the Song dynasty that it is constantly applied to entire cities and the geography of China as a whole’. Knapp (1986, 12), however, points out that ‘Zhou cities were sited using divinatory measures [and] principles of geomancy, to ensure a propitious location’. Although the degree of adherence to dogma varied, Feng Shui’s principles—or broader respect for cosmological order—feature prominently in the layout of these cities. Indeed, the evidence of its overall influence is clear. The emperor Huizong (1100 to 1125 AD), for example, built a vast complex of hills to the northeast of the city of Kaifeng, dotting it with pavilions to enhance its cosmological symbolism (Bruun 2008). At Chang’an (the ancient Xi’an) Emperor Wen Di (581 to 604 AD) levelled a hill, created an artificial lake and built a double-towered temple to improve the city’s Feng Shui; and during the Ming Dynasty similar works were undertaken at Guangzhou (Liu 1995; Steinhardt 1990; Zhou and Liu 1999). The works undertaken were rarely definitive: capital and other major cities were continuously changed in accordance with astronomical cycles— with buildings demolished, repositioned and rebuilt (Lip 1997; Tang 2012). For example, the ancient city of Jinyang—the birthplace of seven emperors and several rebellions—was burnt and then flooded by Zhao Kuangyin (927 to 976 AD—the first Emperor of the Song Dynasty) to prevent it from falling into enemy hands and therefore gifting its good Feng Shui to new leaders (Yan 2014). During the Ming Dynasty, the imperial capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing, partly because the latter offered a better Feng Shui location (Lip 1997; Mak 1998). Beijing’s original layout had been determined by the Zhou Li; that layout was retained but modifications were made (e.g. to the number of city

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Fig. 1.4 Ancient Xi’an—the city of Chang’an

gates) to enhance its compliance with Feng Shui principles (Meyer 1978), with the city subject, over time, to ‘the increasing influence of feng shui cosmology’ (Bruun 2008, 33). More generally, Chinese cities continued to reflect the ideals and beliefs of society, aligning with cosmology and expressing adherence to Confucian social structure: ‘[…] despite centuries

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of political upheaval, cultural and social development, and natural disasters, these cities were built and rebuilt much along the same lines from ancient times to the nineteenth century’ (Wu and Gaubatz 2013, 67, quoted in Wu 2015, 17–18). Feng Shui’s influence was also felt in rural areas. There are approximately 2,500 protected villages in China (MOHURD 2014), located and designed in compliance with Feng Shui principles. Many of them are bordered by Feng Shui forests, which were planted by villagers on the advice of Feng Shui Masters, often to compensate for landscape imperfections and particularly the absence of mountains (Coggins 2012) (Fig. 1.5). These forests have been protected by villagers for centuries, as they are ‘believed to bring prosperity, well-being, and good fortune’ to their communities (Coggins and Minor 2018, 4). Other influences include adherence to the bagua concept (literally eight symbols or trigrams), whereby the design of places—sometimes entire villages—incorporates eight elements: an octagon, for example, or eight roads radiating from a central feature. Examples include the ‘Eight Trigram Field’ in Hangzhou (set out between 1127 and 1279 AD) and the ‘Eight Trigram’ villages of Licha, near Guangzhou (built

Fig. 1.5 Feng Shui forest at Beikeng village (Credit Yiping Dong)

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Fig. 1.6 Zhuge village (Credit Alexis Lawrence)

between 1208 and 1224 AD), and Zhuge (Fig. 1.6), in Zhejiang Province (planned and built around 1340 AD) (see Chen and Wu 2009). The arrangement of these urban and rural spaces, directed by emperors or undertaken by peasants, evidences the practical impact of cosmological observation and belief on the development of place. There is nothing unique in China’s experience. Rather, the imprint of heaven on earth, or the significance assigned to social and religious order in the layout of cities, can be observed in many civilisations at many different times. In the next part of this chapter, we expand our analysis of cultural imprints on spatial order and morphology, moving eventually to a fuller conceptualisation of this issue before shifting to the modern period and how the impact of Feng Shui, at different scales, might be interpreted today.

1.3

Place/Landscape as Cultural Praxis

Chinese cities and the buildings therein clearly reveal ‘cosmology and folk beliefs in practical terms’ (Knapp 1986, 108). The same could be said elsewhere, as built environments come to express the values, beliefs and preferences of the societies that shape and populate them. Even a cursory glimpse at urban history will show that cities are more than

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random assemblages of buildings and people in space, and that belief systems and shared values play an important part in the production of space. The spatial organisation of ancient Greece, for example—where a system of poleis of various sizes coexisted independently from one another—reflected a belief in the appropriate scale and process of democracy. Although Athens in the fifth century was bigger and wealthier than other poleis, it did not dominate or become the capital of a unified state. Hall (1998, 36) points out that although this system of associated and equal political centres ‘was originally the result of geography’, it became ‘the product not only of geography but also of culture’ with all Greeks, including Athenians, coming to see this spatial-political model as the ‘natural and right unit for human society’ (ibid., 37). The internal layout of the poleis also revealed the importance attached to the idea of democracy: when this became the way of governing the city, the agora—the place where people met—replaced the acropolis and its temples as the centre of Athenians’ life (ibid.). Other values were also expressed through the way Greek cities were laid out and used: in classical Greece ‘domestic affairs counted for less than political, social and religious life’ (Wycherley 1949, 177, quoted in Hall 1998, 42): therefore prominent sites were occupied by magnificent public buildings and public spaces, whilst private dwellings were relegated to the remaining space. According to Lefebvre (1991, 31), ancient cities had their own ‘spatial practice’ and ‘forged’ their ‘own – appropriated – space’. Moreover, changes in society—or in the ‘mode of production’—generate a ‘fresh space […], a space which is planned and organized subsequently’ (ibid., 47). Medieval cities, for example, ‘clustered at the foot of a great castle or church’ (Abercrombie 1943, 48) reflecting the dominance of landlords and ecclesiastic institutions over the rest of the population and expressing the feudal mode of production. During the Middle Ages, the centrality of religion in people’s lives was expressed through the erection of magnificent Cathedrals and austere monasteries, which remain markers of that particular social order. When the trading bourgeoisie rose to power, following the dissolution of the feudal system during the Renaissance, a new ‘spatial code’ rose to prominence which evidenced an emergent mode of production: that of ‘merchant capitalism’ (Lefebvre 1991, 47). The Renaissance put men and not God at the centre of the universe and found expression through its own spatial language. Renaissance towns celebrated their most prominent people and organisations: their ‘streets and squares were arranged in concord to the public buildings and palaces

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of political leaders and institutions’ (ibid., 47). In Florence, for example, buildings were regarded ‘as the sign of a great man’ (Hall 1998, 70) and were erected to commemorate his accomplishments. Moving forward to contemporary societies, iconic architecture and regenerated city spaces are conditioned by their own social contexts—which are determined by productive forces and capitalist values—and express the ‘agenda[s] of the politically and economically powerful’ (Jones 2009, 2521). Places are therefore imbued with value: the way people organise their space, plan and build their cities, and shape their landscapes is guided by a ‘sense of place’ which is influenced by sociocultural circumstances. According to Bourdieu (2005), people who occupy similar positions in social space share a similar disposition, or habitus: ‘all the elements of his or her behaviours have something in common, a kind of affinity of style, like the works of the same painter’ (Bourdieu 2005, 44). Rather than being an intrinsic part of an individual’s nature, habitus is ‘a set of acquired characteristics which are the product of social conditions’ (ibid., 45) and thus ‘the mediating link between objective social structures and individual action’. Habitus therefore represents ‘the embodiment in individual actors of systems of social norms, understandings and patterns of behaviour, which, while not wholly determining action, do ensure that individuals are more disposed to act in some ways than others’ (Painter 2000, 242). People’s experience of social space in their everyday life creates a predisposition towards the formulation of certain expectations about their future, which align with both their past and current position in social space (Bourdieu 1990). Habitus both influences and is influenced by social practices; as it is ‘a product of history’, it constantly changes (Bourdieu 2005, 45). Accumulated experience affects the way individuals form knowledge and act, including in relation to the built environment. Ultimately ‘social space tends to be translated, with more or less distortions, into physical space’ (Bourdieu 2000, 134) with the latter coming to reflect particular social attitudes and distinctions. Hence habitus —an internalised set of enduring and socially constructed values—generates distinctive spatial practices. Indeed, there is a dialectical relationship between the habitus and the space that people inhabit: between habitus and habitat. ‘The agent engaged in practice […] inhabits [the world] like a garment […] or a familiar habitat. He feels at home in the world because the world is also in him, in the form of habitus’ (ibid., 142–143).

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Archer (2005, 431) contends that ‘built environment and habitus mutually sustain each other, but neither has absolute control over the other’: rather, both can (and do) evolve to adjust to changed circumstances, continually reshaping one another. In a similar vein, Lefebvre (1991) suggests that an existing space might be used in different ways from its initial purpose, as it is constantly redefined by social relationships: ‘(social) space is a (social) product’ (Lefebvre 1991, 26). Reflecting on Lefebvre’s extensive writings on this subject, Molotch (1993, 887) concludes that ‘space is produced and reproduced through human intentions’, and subsequently ‘constrains and influences those producing it’. Asserting the social production of space means that ‘every society […] produce a space, its own space’ (Lefebvre 1991, 3, emphasis added). Massey (2005, 9) reinforces this message, noting that space ‘is always in the process of being made’ and we can imagine it ‘as a simultaneity of stories so far’. Very similar reflections can be found in earlier writings. Heidegger (1971), for example, draws attention to the intimate link between ‘dwelling’ and ‘building’. Sharr (2007, 36) observes that the philosopher avoided the use of commas in the title of his seminal work ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, thus underscoring ‘a unity he perceived between the three notions’. ‘[T]he erecting of buildings cannot be understood adequately in terms of either architecture or engineering construction, nor in terms of a mere combination of the two’ (Heidegger 1971, 159): rather ‘building configures physically, over time, how people measure their place in the world’ (Sharr 2007, 2). Below the scale of cities, buildings are the expression of an ongoing human experience; they are receptacles of collective memory and the way individuals and societies understand and inhabit the world around them. They are erected in accordance to the specificity of a place and its inhabitants, and are therefore the products of both physical and social activity; people’s daily lives are configured by the buildings they occupy, which are, in turn, produced by the beliefs and values underpinning those lives. Instead of perceiving ‘building’ as ‘a one-off event that is then followed by dwelling’, Heidegger (1971, 67) proposed that ‘building and dwelling instead remain conjoined as a single ongoing activity’. In fact, they are the same activity: ‘for building isn’t merely a means and a way towards dwelling – to build is in itself already to dwell’ (ibid., 146). Moving forward, the question we wish to pose is whether this bridge from (or unity between) building and dwelling can be corrupted, whether processes can intervene to alter the extent to which place signifies the

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values and beliefs of those who occupy it, or Heidegger’s more precise terms, those who dwell. Again, it is Lefebvre (1991) who offers a means of understanding this unity, and scope for its corruption, in his notion of absolute and abstract space.

1.4

From Absolute to Abstract Space

The previous discussion has established that space is, in essence, socially produced. Over time, it becomes part of the identity of those who occupy, shape and make it (Lefebvre 1991). Societies, both ancient and modern, are however heterogeneous; they are composed of individuals, classes or groups whose ideas differ and who therefore use space to represent their specific value sets and beliefs. Space is thus appropriated and shaped by those individuals, classes and groups on the basis of their relative power, their ideology, and their needs. More than this, ‘groups, classes, or fractions of classes cannot constitute themselves, or recognise one another, as ‘subjects’ unless they generate (or produce) a space’ (Lefebvre 1991, 416). Competition centred on the production of space ensues, with class interests finding spatial expression and dividing ‘between those who produce a space for domination versus those who produce space as an appropriation to serve human needs’ (Molotch 1993, 889). In the case of appropriation, ‘occupied space gives direct expression […] to the relationships upon which social organization is founded’ (Lefebvre 1991, 229). This occurs, for example, in ancient societies where individuals experience social norms through the organisation of a space that ‘comprehends the entire existence’ of those societies (ibid., 240). This absolute space is an expression of a ‘cosmic naturalness’ (ibid., 232), of the forces of nature, and, in time, it also acquires the role of ‘sacred’, ‘magical’ and ‘cosmic’ space. Absolute space ‘has a strictly symbolic existence’ (ibid., 236): it is originally and fundamentally the space of religion but, as it evolves, it also becomes the space of politics. It is therefore ‘made up of sacred or cursed locations: temples, palaces, commemorative or funerary monuments’ (ibid., 240). It extends to private spaces, but only insofar as they have religious or political status (ibid., 241). Molotch (1993, 889) adds that it is ‘space that harmonizes with the body and its scale of reach and perceptual field, rich with smells and sounds that can be apprehended through the daily round’. It is easy to frame the spaces of Feng Shui, described earlier in this chapter, as having been appropriated

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to serve human needs (both physical and spiritual) and therefore as absolute spaces. There is however some blurring with the notion of spaces for domination, serving a more abstract purpose. In the case of domination, writes Molotch (1993, 88), ‘space is put to the service of some abstract purpose [including] to facilitate state power’. Abstract space may be the space of bureaucratic politics—being both ‘political’ and ‘institutional’ (Lefebvre 1991, 285)—or an economic space, supporting the reproduction of capital (ibid., 57). It is ‘the space of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism (ibid., 57), wired into the world of business and commerce. Continuing in this vein, Stanek (2011, 151) compares the ‘use value’ of absolute space—‘related to the need, the expectation, the wish’—with the prioritised ‘exchange value’ of abstract space: exchange is the abstract purpose, which ‘implies interchangeability: the exchangeability of a good makes that good into a commodity’ (Lefebvre 1991, 337). Therefore, the dominated space resulting from this process is a ‘product’, which contrasts to appropriated space, which is instead ‘a crafted “work”, organically emerging out of the felt needs and urges of daily life’ (Molotch 1993, 889). In a sense, absolute space arises from social life, divorced from commodification (but not always from property), whilst abstract space arises, later on, from economic life and the pursuit of power and profit. This abstraction is a feature of late capitalism, where exchange value is ‘expressed in terms of money. In the past one bought or rented land. Today what are bought (and, less frequently, rented) are volumes of space: rooms, floors, flats, apartments, balconies, various facilities (swimming-pools, tennis courts, parking-spaces, etc.)’ (Lefebvre 1991, 337). Abstract space not only ‘facilitates capitalist production, distribution, and consumption’ but is itself transformed ‘into a commodity: produced, distributed, and consumed’ (Stanek 2011, 151). In this respect, space is ‘considered analogous to other economic goods’ and becomes ‘an important part of economies’ (Molotch 1993, 888). The notion of a movement from absolute to abstract spaces (as contexts for human existence), but also the continuing juxtaposition of these spaces, is further captured by Lefebvre (1991) in his analysis of the extension of capitalism and its ‘conquest of space’. Capitalism and development have extended ‘their reach to space in its entirety’ (ibid., 325), laying their ‘imprint upon the total occupation of all pre-existing space and upon the production of new space’ (ibid., 326). Indeed, investment in space has become ‘an ever increasingly profitable activity’, inspiring

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capitalism’s ‘conquest of space – in trivial terms, in real estate speculation, capital projects (inside and outside the city), [and] the buying and sale of space […] on a worldwide scale’ (Lefebvre 2003, 155). For Lefebvre, space is not only the place where surplus value is generated and circulated, but becomes ‘the product of social labour, the very general object of production, and consequently of the formation of surplus value’ (ibid., 159). The notion of abstract spaces (of capital) connects strongly with broader literatures on land, the built environment (as ‘consumption fund’ for ‘capital switching’) and capital’s ‘secondary circuit’ (Harvey 1978). That secondary circuit (a built environment through which capital flows and is reproduced) provides an opportunity for the ‘siphoning off of loose money set on speculation in real estate and financial assets, liquid loot yearning to become concrete in space’ (Merrifield 2006, 83). The ultimate abstraction of space is its ‘financialisation’: the practice of holding space as collateral asset, borrowing against its anticipated exchange value, creating debt and trading that debt on the international money markets. Lefebvre’s earlier notion of abstract space therefore aligns with, and is foundational to, the broader political economy perspective on land and urban development that has come to the fore today: land as a ‘market commodity’ bestowing wealth and power ‘to some very important people’ (Molotch 1976, 309) and thereby shaping the spatial arrangement of modern societies (Harvey 2001). That broader political economy requires only brief introduction here. Harvey (2001) contends that capital investment has transformed the role of cities. Their function as places for productive activity has been relegated behind their role in capital accumulation. The maturation of financial markets (and rise of complex financial instruments, including structured finance) has meant that when traditional commodity markets become saturated (and producer and investor profits decline), capital has the opportunity to ‘switch’ away from that ‘primary circuit’ (of industrial production) to a secondary circuit comprising the land and space of the built environment. From that circuit further profit can be extracted in the direct form of land rent and the indirect form of debt trading (i.e. debt held on land in the form of commercial and residential credit, which can be securitized and sold on to investors). In this way, space—and the built environment therein—becomes its own circuit of ‘production, exchange and consumption’ (Harvey 1978, 106) and the city becomes a ‘growth machine’ delivering monetary benefit through value extraction for those

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well-positioned to take advantage of this new reality. Elite groups ‘increase aggregate rents and trap related wealth’ creating a class consensus (regularly agreed with municipal authorities) around the value of growth, separating the ‘capitalist’ or ‘rentier’ class from others who continue to think of the city as a place to work and live (Logan and Molotch 1987, 50). One of the major consequences of this growing abstraction of space is that ‘city building is less and less responsive to human need and more and more driven by entrepreneurial fervour’ (Beauregard 1994, 730), being increasingly dominated by international real estate and financial markets. All of this becomes the lived reality of abstract space: a growth ‘boosterism’ that mobilises political actors to direct land-use decisions towards the support of powerful elites (Logan and Molotch 1987, 65). Therefore the hallmark of that abstract space is a convergence of economy and politics: an ‘elimination of all differences’ (Lefebvre 1979, 293) that produces repetitive, interchangeable and generically designed spaces (Stanek 2011) that, at the same time, reinforce social homogeneity and fragmentation (Lefebvre 1991). Social fragmentation arises from expulsion: the dogged pursuit of increased rent through additional investment, with no regard to the impact this has on those individuals and groups for whom the city remains a space for living (Logan and Molotch 1987), but who may be displaced by rising rents. The encroachment of abstract space ‘can be resisted by the remnants of “absolute space” that survive in the habits of “everyday life”’ (Coleman 2015, 55). These spaces of ‘real life’ can be viewed as superior or authentic, aligning with and appropriated to meet people’s daily needs. Their authenticity is judged relative to the ‘abstracted hell laid on by planner’s schemes’ (Molotch 1993, 890): absolute spaces are the products of time and use, standing against the ‘deformities’ created by capital. Yet the notion of authenticity is a complex one: a simple binary between ‘valued absolute spaces’ and ‘devalued abstract ones’ (ibid., 893) is difficult to draw: ‘elites may produce places to monumentalize their authority or make money [but the] masses, nevertheless, may like them enormously’ (ibid., 893). Shopping malls, entertainment parks and new apartments all find their markets within urban populations, suggesting that they meet a real need. But there is perhaps a confusion here, or a simplification, that equates ‘use value’ to authenticity (and assigns it also to absolute space) and views exchange value as something corrupting—that is profane rather than sacred, or fails to express ‘symbolic existence’. But that symbolism

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has historically, in the case of Feng Shui, extended to both the power (and fortune) of rulers and the everyday lives of ordinary people. In the final part of this introduction, we use the distinction between absolute and abstract space to frame a preliminary analysis of the ‘modernisation’ of Chinese geomancy, ending with the question that we return to at the end of this book: has Feng Shui lost its authenticity—its basic connection to cosmology—through its more varied and modern use, sometimes in the ‘abstract’ setting of real estate development?

1.5

Tracking the Transition from Absolute to Abstract Space Through Scales, Regulation and Urban Development

China has been pursuing modernisation since the 1950s, firstly through an emphasis on industrial development and large cities, and subsequently through improved agricultural methods and the development of medium and smaller cities (Wu 2015). Seventy years ago, China’s communist government imposed tight regulation on urban development whilst rural areas were given relatively free rein, with more opportunities for informality. ‘The city, in contrast to the countryside, represented the domain of the state’ (ibid., 41) and a place of increased domination and control. That control, manifest in an industrial and utilitarian ideology, resulted in a ban on the practice of Feng Shui in mainland China during the period of Mao’s leadership (1949 to 1978). The desire to eradicate ‘backwardness and superstition’ (Bruun 2008, 118) had the greatest effect in towns and cities where the state’s reach was most pervasive. In rural areas, however, a ‘steady demand for Feng Shui- related services’ remained (ibid., 47), as did the Feng Shui forests (Coggins and Minor 2018) and the practice of laying out homes according to its principles (Knapp 1986). Also, the new communist government was unable to exert influence over Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, which continued to view Feng Shui as an important guide for the arrangement of space (Mak and So 2015; Teather and Chow 2000). With the departure of the Japanese and the return of its British colonial rulers, Feng Shui in Hong Kong ‘assumed the role of native Chinese religion as opposed to foreign influence and Christianity: it became an element in a Chinese identity in relation to the European elite’ (Bruun 2008, 129).

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In mainland China, although Feng Shui survived the Cultural Revolution and has continued to exert an influence on the built environment at various scales, the nature of this influence has changed over recent decades, adapting to the country’s new socio-economic realities. Following economic reform, initiated at the end of the 1970s, China has undergone an unprecedented transformation that has affected both cities and the countryside. The country’s economic revolution—which has seen China transition from a rigidly planned to a market-oriented economy and become the second largest economy in the world—has been most visibly manifest in cities, which have grown at an astronomical rate (Wu et al. 2007). China has experienced unparalleled urbanisation: between 2000 and 2010, its overall urban population grew by 51%. By 2014, 54% of China’s population (758 million people) lived in urban areas (Chan and Wan 2017) and this is forecasted to rise to 75% by 2050 (Wu et al. 2007). The main contributor to the growth in urban population is the massive rural to urban migration. By 2013, a third of the country’s urban inhabitants (250 million people) were rural migrants (Chan and Wan 2017). Urbanisation has been propelled not only by China’s remarkable economic growth, but also by government policy. Since the mid-2000s, the implementation of urban–rural ‘integration plans’ has encouraged ‘the “merging” of rural settlements and the demolition of smaller villages so as to free up land quotas’ (Wu 2015, 58) and focus development in urban areas, with the consequent ‘aggressive removal of rural villages and the resettlement of farmers’ (ibid., 100). More recently, in 2012, the government announced plans to move 250 million additional rural residents into towns and cities by 2050, by offering them urban residence permits (hukou), turning them into urban consumers and contributors to future growth (Chan and Wan 2017; Taylor 2015). These changes, alongside the wider forces of globalisation and its attendant patterns of consumption, have greatly impacted everyday economic and social life. As well as lifting 500 million people out of poverty, they have handed a new urban population an unprecedented level of economic independence, inevitably affecting its aspirations and cultural practices (Wu 2015). Whilst rural migrants seek to orientate themselves in new urban settings, importing cultural practices from their villages, a rural– urban divide remains between the growing cities and rural areas not yet caught up in the maelstrom of urbanisation. For Feng Shui practice, the differences arising from that divide are clear (Coggins 2017). According to Bruun (2008, 60) ‘[…] the contrast

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between popular practice and intellectual thought have never been greater than in the modern period, when rural villages follow centuries-old patterns of thought while urban elites have adopted a modernistic view of life’. Whilst the appropriated spaces of Feng Shui in rural areas can be considered absolute (authentic representations of old beliefs and values, where the human and non-human worlds meet, expressing a bond with nature and its elemental forces), urbanisation (and the urban processes that make modern cities) brings abstraction, meaning either the eradication and replacement of underlying culture or its mobilisation by capitalists (and by regulatory forces) to create synthetic spaces in which property values are elevated (through synthesising cultural norms) and relocated communities, facing unsettling change, placated. How this can happen is analysed in later chapters, but some introductory insights are provided here. The concept of qi, for example, which ‘[…] in rural Feng Shui tends to be as many-sided as in the philosophical tradition’ (Bruun 2008, 59), tends to lose its connotation as a life force (that flows through wind (feng), water (shui) and earth, integrating elements of the spiritual world) and is reinvented in urban areas and processes as flows of currency and of capital that deliver individual and corporate wealth (Coggins 2017). Likewise, Feng Shui in rural settings has remained a ‘cohesive and collective undertaking’, encompassing ‘a complex panoply of spiritual beliefs and magical practices involving supernatural forces and agents’ (Coggins and Minor 2018, 6), conveying a sensitivity to nature that is thought to be of direct benefit to communities. This is expressed in the survival of Feng Shui forests, ‘imbued with spiritual significance’ (ibid., 9), in the ‘sacred landscapes’ of South China (Webb 1995) and in a continued fealty to principles guiding the siting and arrangement of houses, for collective benefit (Bruun 1996). But there is strong indication of a reinterpretation of Feng Shui knowledge for urban settings and processes: a commercialisation of individual benefit that prioritises the material over the spiritual (Madeddu and Zhang 2017), as noted earlier by Bruun (2008) and more recently by Coggins (2017). Hence, Feng Shui in the city takes different forms. There is also a juxtaposition of different Feng Shui priorities: urban growth, underpinned by migration, has brought rural values to cities. The millions of villagers who have left their ancestral communities to resettle in urban areas are ‘practitioners of an agrarian, place-specific, animist, vitalist, lineage-centric Feng Shui [but] face radically different spatial challenges

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in making and maintaining meaningful dwelling space in radically disenchanted landscapes’ (Coggins 2017, 730) and when trying to recreate the absolute space of Feng Shui within their own homes. By finding small ways to overcome these challenges—through, for example, the placement of objects with symbolic meaning—the new arrivals self-identify as a social group (Feuchwang 1974, in Bruun 2003). This affords some protection to traditional practice, but it must contend with a broader erasing of Feng Shui’s domestic imprint within Chinese cities, as many traditional courtyard houses are lost to development and traditional values are displaced (Lo 2010). A degree of protection is afforded traditional Feng Shui by the movement and mixing of population, but that mixing also results in transference of values and an ‘increasingly sanitized version of the old tradition’ arising from its ‘urban resurgence’ (Bruun 2014, 173). A ‘Westernisation’ of Feng Shui has been observed, which prioritises the well-being of the living over attention to gods, ghosts and ancestors: rationalism (focused on achieving benefit for the individual) has tended to replace symbolism in the practice of Feng Shui (ibid.). The tendency of urban people in China and other Asian countries to commission—often expensive—Feng Shui experts to create comfortable living spaces (Bruun 2014; Teather and Chow 2000), alleviate the anxieties arising from hectic urban lives (Tsang 2004) and generally attract good fortune (Knapp 1999; Volodzko 2015) is cited as evidence of this. Feng Shui has been transformed into a form of interior design, with expensive accessories replacing the basic need to arrange (inexpensive and simple) household objects in a way that accords with its basic principles: ‘as fashion, trickery or trustworthy truth’ the practice of Feng Shui ‘in urban interior and garden design in the rich cities of Euro-America as well as China has been added to its traditional use for the siting of graves, homes, and public buildings’ (Feuchwang 2003, vii). At this domestic level, with its commercial supports, a loss of authenticity marked by a shift from Feng Shui as an absolute to an abstract space might be claimed. But whether practised by rural migrants or wealthy adherents in New York, London or Shanghai, Feng Shui remains a framework for dwelling—a means of domesticating one’s space. These remain appropriated rather than dominated spaces. Therefore the search for a fundamental shift in the purpose, and authenticity, of Feng Shui needs to happen at a different scale. Together with rural migrants, investors in the urban housing market are the main driver of the urban Feng Shui turn

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(Bruun 2014). Whilst in ancient China the development of Feng Shui practice was steered principally by the emperors, the revival of Feng Shui in modern urban China is mainly due to lifestyle changes and commercial forces. Since the 1980s, ‘interest […] from Chinese business has been explicit and almost universal’ (Bruun 2008, 122) with Feng Shui becoming a lucrative proposition not only for the rising number of Feng Shui masters offering their services to urbanites, but also for housing and other property developers, who increasingly use it to elevate property values and boost profit (Bond 2008; Yau 2012). Consumer preferences are impacting housing choices to such a degree that ‘superior Feng Shui’ has now become a key marketing tool and claim. At a project level, the use of Feng Shui by developers suggests a new role for Chinese geomancy in the domination of space by elites for economic purposes: in this new abstract space of Feng Shui, its role is to extract maximum land rent. Does this denote a loss of authenticity, with Feng Shui mobilised cynically, or does it merely signal that space is now produced through different, commercial processes, but retains its use value and symbolic importance? The separation of producer and consumer is a common feature of modern development and urban processes, creating a divide between those who ‘make’ the built environment and those who live with and within it. But values transcend these boundaries: the environment of production, regulation of that production and consumption share values, unless we see the interests and values of elites as being entirely separate from those of wider society. Therefore, our concern in this book for the impact of Feng Shui on the contemporary built environment requires a focus on individuals (adapting space to meet need), producers (with commercial motivations but interfacing with individuals as consumers, and existing in the same cultural space) and regulators (reflecting the values of wider society). Those values have changed in the later twentieth century. Modernity has eclipsed eastern cosmology; and Western ideas, alongside Western natural science in particular, have provided China with a new cultural referent (Chen and Nakama 2004). As a consequence of this, ‘from an early date Chinese authorities ruled out a positive contribution from traditional Feng Shui to a modernizing society’ either culturally or scientifically (Bruun 2014, 173). For a long time, it was identified with ignorance (Bramble 2003) and with ‘feudal superstition’ (Bruun 2014, 174). However, where the denigration of Feng Shui was less pronounced, Hong Kong being a case in hand, a regulatory impact may still be

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detected, as may the desire to avoid disruptions to good Feng Shui and the inevitable corrective costs that follow (Moore 2010). In the mainland too, cultural influences remain, with ‘elites and bureaucrats [now] concerned with Feng Shui in ways the same people would have once attributed (at least officially) to feudal peasant notions’ (Cartier 2002, 1516). Even the communist government sends out mixed signals: it was certainly no accident that the Beijing Summer Olympic Games began at 8 pm on 8 August—an auspicious combination of time and date, intended to guarantee the success of the games (Wu et al. 2012). In the chapters that follow, we will track the changing impact and imprint of Feng Shui on Chinese Cities. The three agents of that impact—individuals, commercial interests and regulators—continue, in this modern period, to shape both the private and domestic spaces of Feng Shui and also its public spaces: the wider urban fabric of cities. The broader sense of transition from absolute spaces (of nature) to abstract spaces (of domination by commerce) will be used to frame the case studies, leading us to the book’s broader questions: to what extent (and how) does Feng Shui deliver a pervasive influence over Chinese cities, and is that impact today an authentic (and ‘absolute’) expression of Feng Shui’s roots or merely an abstraction, designed to exploit land value and extract ever greater profit from cities?

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CHAPTER 2

The Case Studies and Research Approach

Abstract China’s history of economic and political reform over the last 200 years has potentially profound implications for its attachment to traditional beliefs and values. This chapter introduces two cases chosen to exemplify centrality to that reform and relative insulation from it: Guangdong province and Hong Kong. The separation of these two parts of China is briefly sketched, before each is introduced in greater detail. Guangdong occupied centre-stage in the reform movement of the late nineteenth century. It then became a focus of nationalist and communist political ambition in the first half of the twentieth century. Hong Kong, in contrast, was ceded to the British after the Opium War, leading it in a different economic and political trajectory. The second part of this chapter details the research undertaken in the two case study areas: how key ideas emerging in Chapter 1 are operationalized, and how data were collected and analysed. Keywords Guangdong · Hong Kong · Methods · Data · Analysis

This chapter introduces the ‘back stories’ of our cases and details the research undertaken—both primary and desk-based—in order to dissect and understand the continuing impact of Feng Shui on the built environment. The case studies—Hong Kong and Guangdong—are both Chinese, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Madeddu and X. Zhang, Feng Shui and the City, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0847-6_2

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but are used here to represent the political reality of ‘one country, two systems’. Although British control of Hong Kong ended in 1997, the territory’s separation from mainland China—first as a colony and then as a ‘special administrative area’—incubated a different development trajectory. Given the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) push back against Feng Shui after 1949, viewing it as a potential counter-weight to the goal of modernisation, there was an expectation that the forms and influences of Feng Shui in Hong Kong would differ from those found on the mainland, represented here by Guangdong. Indeed the longer narrative of separation, over a 200-year period, is important and therefore used as the starting point for this chapter. We further suggest that the handover of Hong Kong, from British to Chinese control just over 20 years ago, did not signal any sudden cultural or social realignment, but rather a new episode in the territory’s struggle for self-identity, rooted in its own local values, which are a product of the longer separation. An assumption behind the choice of cases was that Feng Shui in Hong Kong was viewed by the British as something benign, a worldview that in no way threatened colonial authority. On the other hand, in the mainland it was perceived by the CCP as rootedness in superstition, a threat to sociopolitical advancement and modernisation. The contrasting recent histories of the two cases (Fig. 2.1) were expected to impact Feng Shui’s form and influence, shaping two different sets of relationships. This chapter performs a number of tasks: it starts, in the first part (2.1), by expanding upon the above narrative, detailing the separation of Hong Kong from the mainland. In two subsequent parts (2.2 and 2.3), it introduces the case studies. Their recent development histories are outlined and these histories are extended in each of the case study Chapters 3 and 4. The fourth part of the chapter (2.4) returns to the constellation of ideas—abstract and absolute space, and authenticity—set out in the last chapter, emphasising the foci and questions that will be carried forward into our analysis of cases. How those ideas will be unpacked and the questions answered is the subject of parts 2.5 and 2.6 of this chapter, where we detail our research approach, our use of interviews with local actors and our analytical strategy.

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Fig. 2.1 Location of two case studies

2.1 China and Hong Kong: A History of Separation Hong Kong was a British colony for more than 150 years, effectively separating it politically and culturally from China and insulating it from much of the turmoil affecting the mainland during that period. Guangdong endured no such separation and is considered by some as the seat of Chinese civilisation (see below). There is a reasonable expectation therefore of a degree of divergence along different cultural paths, affecting attachment to, and influence of, Feng Shui. When the British took possession of Hong Kong in 1842, China was unified under the rule of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912 AD). There were already signs, however, of the empire’s fading power. Food shortages—caused by the mismatch between population growth and the agricultural capacity of a system blighted by nepotism and corruption— was generating social unrest and declining ‘trust in the dynasty’ (Rossabi 2014, 289). By the early nineteenth century, ‘China, which on the surface still appeared to be a great power, […] actually faced corrosive social divisions’ (ibid., 290). The 1840–1842 Opium War between Britain and China—and the subsequent Treaty of Nanking—not only resulted in

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the ceding in perpetuity of Hong Kong Island to the British, but also marked the beginning of a sustained British presence in several coastal cities across southern and eastern China, including in Guangzhou (then known as Canton) in Guangdong province, and also the start of China’s ‘century of humiliation’ (Wright 2001). Whilst neither the Treaty of Nanking nor later accords brought any Chinese cities formally into the British Empire, the intrusion of foreigners—including the French and the Japanese—into Chinese territory ignited nationalist anger. The combination of economic hardship and burgeoning nationalism at first led to reform of the Qing dynasty (Sang 2009) but later to its fall and replacement with the short-lived republican government of 1912 to 1916. The failure of republicanism triggered a ‘decade of chaos’, the division of China into factions led by ‘warlords’ (Wright 2001, 123), and eventually a full-blown civil war between the Chinese Nationalists and the newly established Communist Party. That war ended in 1949 with victory for Mao Zedong’s communists and the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), since governed by the CCP. Despite apparently seismic upheavals, communist rule has been strangely ‘reminiscent of imperial Chinese governance’ (ibid., 8). Adherence to communist dogma became increasingly flexible after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, with economic reforms giving the appearance of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ (Rossabi 2014). The authority and power of the CCP, like that of the emperors, appear unassailable. But whilst any pursuit of greater democracy is quashed, sometimes brutally, the Chinese people retain the freedom to ‘pursue private wealth’ (Wright 2001, 170). Meanwhile, Hong Kong was insulated from many of these turbulent episodes of Chinese history (Wang 2019). Interpretations of its own story view it either as ‘apart from China’ (the colonial perspective) or as an integral ‘part of China’ (the nationalist viewpoint) (Mathews 1997). However, the truth is that the territory during this period was shaped by both British influence and by the unfolding narrative of the mainland. Hong Kong’s insulation was far from absolute. On the British side, the territory’s colonial masters wanted Hong Kong to become ‘not only the great emporium for […] China trade, but also a model of British good government, a living exhibition of European civilisation, [and] a meeting point between east and west, where the manners, institutions and technologies of both cultures would engage each other in a productive and beneficial way’ (Munn 2009, 2). This ‘Anglo-China’ model was not immediately realised and it took the Colonial Government

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almost three decades to ‘establish stable and serviceable political links with the leadership of the Chinese community’ (ibid., 2). The British relied heavily on collaborative relations with the Hong Kong Chinese, many of whom migrated to the territory from the wider Canton region, providing both capital and labour for the colony (Sang 2009). The empowerment and rewarding of local elites were typical of British colonialism, which ruled through proxies, offering social and economic privilege in exchange for loyalty (Ngo 1999) and thereby seeding the growth of colonial bourgeoisie (Carroll 2005). The selective co-opting of elites was ‘accompanied by a systematic policy of controlling the working class’ through a strong judiciary and the empowerment of local officials (Ngo 1999, 5). The British exerted complete but indirect rule through this ‘collaborative colonialism’ (Sang 2009), establishing the institutional foundation for Hong Kong’s emergence as a capitalist city whose wealth depended on commerce and trade and whose political distinctiveness was seeded in its mixed cultural identity. But whilst directing the city’s institutional and political future, the British had no interest in limiting cultural expression of either the territory’s few thousand indigenous inhabitants, living in villages on the island or in the New Territories, or its new Chinese settlers. The latter, keen to assert their Chinese identity, displayed a ‘fondness for Confucianism and a more general inclination towards traditionalism’ (ibid., 25). This cultural conservatism marked Hong Kong apart from the ‘iconoclastic and progressive challenges of […] modern Chinese nationalism’ that gripped the mainland for much of the twentieth century (ibid., 28). Hong Kong’s distinctiveness, relative to China, seemed more pronounced during and immediately after the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 when the mainland pursued a policy of isolation that only ended with the ‘open door’ policy following Mao Zedong’s death. But even after 1976, economic reforms were accompanied by a strategy of ‘infection prevention’ that aimed to limit ‘outside influences from penetrating the mainland too quickly’ and forestall the risk of social and political disruption from ideas and forces that the CCP might struggle to manage (Loh 2006, 294). China’s own relationship with Hong Kong was a cautious one, acknowledging perhaps that too-rapid assimilation would bring disruption not only to the territory but also to the mainland—through exposure to more ‘liberal lifestyles’ (ibid., 295). For that reason, Mao’s successor—Deng Xiaoping—assured the British that, after the planned handover in 1997, a ‘one country, two systems’ principle

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would see ‘socialism practised on the mainland’ whilst Hong Kong would ‘retain its own social and economic system’ and continue to be largely selfgoverned (Wright 2001, 172). This arrangement was eventually written into the ‘Basic Law’, allowing the territory to ‘exercise a high degree of autonomy and enjoy executive, legislative and independent judicial power’ (The Basic Law, Article 2) until 2047. Moreover, the population was to keep some democratic rights and the freedom of expression and religion: an element of ‘Britishness’ would remain, with English retaining its status as an official language. This arrangement—with Hong Kong as a ‘special administrative region’ (SAR) of the PRC—sets Hong Kong apart from the rest of China. But the growing influence of China, and its frustration with pro-Western and even pro-independence mindsets, is becoming increasingly evident. The weighting of power towards pro-‘Beijing’ politicians in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (Loh 2006, 296) and its reform agenda—new extradition arrangements and bans on protest and ‘sedition’ in 2019 and 2020—have been countered by mass protests, including the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and the six months of sustained ‘pro-democracy’ demonstrations of 2019. China is confident in its right to rule Hong Kong and Hongkongers, in turn, are tenacious in their defence of established freedoms. Hong Kong’s future development and liberties, however, are now shrouded in further uncertainty, with Beijing forcing the enactment of a new security law—officially ‘the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’—at the end of June 2020. That law has cast doubt, in Hong Kong and internationally, on the status and viability of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle with, as yet, unknown consequences. Irrespective of these recent shifts, postcolonial Hong Kong has become an international financial hub, whose Chinese identity is ‘tangled with colonial history and regional geopolitics’ (Wang 2019, 420). Its population is accustomed to wealth with freedom. But on the mainland, the CCP allows ‘no significant political opposition to its policies or criticism of them’: it encourages, however, ‘[…] the widespread pursuit of wealth as a way of distracting the Chinese people from demanding political reforms and democracy’ (Wright 2001, 5–6). The Western view is often that Chinese economic growth has been built on authoritarian control, with public freedoms—of expression, belief and dissent—bartered away for personal cash interest. But this deal is not acceptable to all: China itself sees regular alternation between the ‘relaxation of authoritarian policies’,

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as pressure for new freedoms build, and the reinstatement of ‘repressive’ action, as those freedoms risk instability (Rossabi 2014, 402). Censorship is widespread with people fed a careful and restricted diet of news from China and abroad. The Beijing view is that its ‘Chinese-style democracy’ correctly ‘emphasises the state’s supreme [and] absolute authority over individuals (including its granting of political rights to the citizens)’ and ensures ‘harmony of interests between the rulers and the ruled’ (Lau 2019, 500). Hong Kong is the point of critical friction between these competing worldviews. In this section, we have sought to provide a general overview of China’s relationship with Hong Kong. In the next two sections, Guangdong and Hong Kong are introduced as our case studies. Setting aside the political and cultural ties between the territory and mainland, we focus on how these places have developed over the last 200 years, providing the contexts for extended analysis in Chapters 3 and 4.

2.2

Guangdong: The Last 200 Years

The Opium War that ended with the ceding of Hong Kong to British rule also marked the beginning of modern China. Guangdong was centrally positioned in this story and direct witness to the turbulent events that reached their climax with the creation of the PRC. It was in Guangdong that revolution was seeded, with local eruptions in the 1840s becoming national events in the following decade—including the Taiping Rebellion of 1851. China’s treaties with foreign powers were costly, resulting in war reparations and ransom fees (for the recovery of cities) totaling 28 million yuan and in trade agreements, giving unfettered market access to overseas companies that decimated Chinese industry. The Qing Government was forced to raise taxes at a moment when domestic industrial production was plummeting, causing mass unemployment and social unrest—much of which centred on Guangdong. Simultaneous to outbreaks of rebellion, against the national government, China also entered a period of industrial modernisation in response to foreign competition. The first capitalist enterprise—the Nanhai Jichanglong Silk Reeling Factory—opened in Guangdong at the beginning of the 1860s, marking a desire for both political and economic reform. The success of this and other enterprises paved the way for the emergence of a reformist elite that sought to revitalise China by emulating Western political and economic systems.

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By the 1890s, Guangdong had become the home of a revolutionary Reform Movement with Sun Yat-sen as its most prominent leader. His Xingzhonghui—or ‘Revive China Society’—spearheaded the first Guangzhou uprising in 1895. He then went on to found the ‘Bourgeois Revolutionary Party Alliance’, which led the 1911 Revolution that triggered the overthrow of the Qing Government. In the power vacuum that followed, marked by the reign of the Northern Warlords, Sun Yat-sen established the Revolutionary Nationalist Government in Guangzhou with the purpose of maintaining a single democratic republic. Standing against this goal was the CCP, which held its third Party Congress in Guangzhou in 1923. United for the time being by common enemies—Western colonists, Chinese Warlords and, later on, Japanese invaders—these unlikely allies founded the Huangpu Military Academy in 1924, with the aim of professionalising and strengthening their military capacity. The Revolutionary War against the warlords and colonists began in 1926 and was lost within a year, triggering the second Guangzhou uprising, this time led by the CCP. Despite the political maelstrom, Guangdong’s development continued apace, still influenced by the reform movement of the later 1800s and by Western industrial and political practice. Guangzhou had remained an important commercial port after 1842. The British had made their stronghold in Hong Kong, but Guangzhou continued to prosper, attracting colonists and adventurers from other countries who wished to establish direct trade links with China (Wei et al. 2008). During the next 100 years, Guangzhou became the primary port-city of modern China, retaining strong cultural and economic links with the West. The city itself had already been planned along a central axis, with an inner administrative compound and the ruling class—political elites, government officials and the guarding army—residing in the walled city (see Chapter 3). The majority of the city’s civilians—from businessmen and foreigners to workers—lived in a western enclave. In the late Qing dynasty, the west wall became a clear dividing line between the imperial compounds, temples and academies on its east side and commercial and handicraft activities to the west. One significant outcome of modernisation was that ‘merchants gradually [gained] power, while the gentry declined’ (Wei et al. 2008, 617). The west city was taken as the British–French concession after the Opium War and divided into twelve blocks. These blocks were further subdivided and auctioned to foreign buyers. Westernstyle development followed, comprising green squares, open streets and

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infrastructure needed to make the concession self-sufficient (power and water plants, a post and telegraph office, hospital and fire station) and provide for the needs of its foreign population (a church, theatre and tennis courts) (Zhou 2005). During the period from the end of the Qing dynasty (1912) until the Communist victory over China’s nationalists (1949), significant urban renewal was undertaken in Guangzhou, involving the demolition of the city wall to facilitate greater permeability to traffic. New cultural and educational facilities were built, including libraries, gardens and temples. And Guangzhou saw its first high-rise residential buildings, alongside Western-style terraced housing (Zhou 2012). In the same way that Guangdong was central to the story of political reform in the late nineteenth century, it took centre-stage again in China’s economic reforms after 1978. In 1980, part of the province, including the city of Shenzhen, was designated a special economic zone. Four years later, Guangzhou became one of fourteen economic development zones distributed along the coast: a powerhouse at the centre of the Pearl River Delta economic agglomeration. Since then, and particularly after the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, the central part of Guangdong province has been brought into the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area: a planning zone in which stronger connections between these economic hubs are promoted. Hence Guangdong maintains its historic role as an interface for economic and cultural exchange, between the mainland and China’s postcolonial territories. Guangdong is currently the fourth biggest subnational economy in the world—behind California, Texas and New York—and its economic strength derives from car manufacturing, petrochemicals, electronics and IT products, and construction. It is the engine of China’s post-1978 economic rise (Fig. 2.2). Guangzhou is one of the strongest points of internal and external connection, being a hub for international, national and regional transport including highways, regional rail networks, high-speed national rail, trade and air travel (see Fig. 2.3). The city continues to grow, with plans for further expansions in all directions, supported by numerous large infrastructure investments and mega-projects (Li et al. 2014). All of this connection, growth and change has brought significant social transformation, not only for Guangzhou but also the wider province. Millions of migrants have been drawn to the province and now power its continued growth. Urban villages have sprung up, providing cheap accommodation for low-income migrants (Tian 2008). These are high-density, host to a

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Fig. 2.2 Map of Guangdong province

Fig. 2.3 Guangzhou today (Credit Hanlin Wen)

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diversity of functions and to a rich ethnic mix. Whilst they are undoubtedly places with social challenges, they contribute to the vibrancy of Guangdong, as do the concentration of African migrants in the ‘ethnic economic area’ of Guangzhou’s Xiaobei Road—China’s ‘Africa Town’ (Li et al. 2009). Guangdong is diverse in terms of both its cultural mix and political history: it has been the cradle of reform, nationalism and of Chinese communism. Today, an indigenous culture is melded with the heterogeneity brought by successive waves of migration, which is manifest in provincial dialect, architecture, diet, customs and religion (Situ and Xu 2005). The proliferation of colonnades, for example, signals the influence of European, and especially Mediterranean, architecture in this part of coastal China during the Qing dynasty. Chinese traditional styles are brought together with elements of the Baroque—see Fig. 2.4. Past openness has left its imprint on Guangdong’s people and their built environment, and that openness continues to be a feature of the province. Wu and Zhong (2007) argue that whilst many parts of China have seen the replacement of one idea with another, Guangdong is a melting pot in which the old and new are integrated.

Fig. 2.4 Colonnades at Guangzhou commercial area (Credit Hanlin Wen)

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Diversity—of interests, worldviews and cultures—has implications for the state of Feng Shui as Guangdong is inevitably less traditional that other parts of the countries, or rather those other parts may have a more ‘static’ connection to older beliefs. Like Hong Kong, Guangdong always has one eye to business and sees opportunity in forging connections with new markets and new partners. Being far removed from the Chinese central plains, Guangdong is less rooted in traditional Confucianism and its prioritisation of family and farming over commerce and profit. In many respects it is a commercial province with a commercial history: in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Guangdong suffered periodic food shortages, not because of any lack of fertile land, but because the land was planted with cash crops, including tobacco, for overseas markets—making it rich, but also reliant on food from the north (Jia and Gan 2013). The significance of Feng Shui in Guangdong is tied to this commercial culture, becoming a source of success and prosperity. But because the province has enjoyed good fortune, other parts of the country emulate the customs or practices of Guangdong. Feng Shui has long been associated with good fortune—with favourable weather and a plentiful harvest—but in Guangdong, good fortune and good business became synonymous, shaping how Feng Shui is used and perceived.

2.3

Hong Kong: The Last 200 Years

The story of Hong Kong parallels that of Guangdong although the scale of rural to urban change is arguably more dramatic, metamorphosing from a small fishing village, to a trading port and eventually to a global financial centre with a prominent role in the world’s economy. Its spatial development is the result of different forces that have intertwined to deliver the global city that we know today: as well as following the pattern of its economic activities, Hong Kong’s urban development has been influenced by the city’s political history and by its topography (see Figs. 2.5 and 2.6). It was noted above that Hong Kong Island became a British colony after the 1840 to 1842 Opium War and was formally ceded to Britain through the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Hong Kong was only a small fishing village when the Colonial Government took possession; however, its immediate designation as a free port, with no restrictions imposed on foreign traders and investors, led to a rapid increase first in trading and then in industrial activities (Chiu and Lui 2009). In 1843, the British

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Fig. 2.5 Map of Hong Kong

Fig. 2.6 Hong Kong Today (Credit Author)

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Government started building the City of Victoria on the northern coast of Hong Kong Island, modelling it on European cities of that time; it established governmental departments and commercial facilities for the entrepôt, and developed military buildings, open spaces and cultural facilities, as well as two distinct residential areas: one for the European and one for the Chinese residents (Ho 2018). The latter, located in the western part of the city, provided a ‘compelling contrast’ to the former, with houses packed together and densely inhabited by a population largely composed of migrant men (Hayes 2006, 18). This division was not an intentional indication of governmental land policies, but rather resulted from commercial investment opportunities taken up by small Chinese businesses linking to the city’s bazaar areas (Ho 2018). Later on, however, the government intentionally separated the Chinese and foreign communities, especially as the former lived in temporary housing in poor sanitary conditions (ibid.). When the Kowloon Peninsula was added, in 1860, it was initially used as a military stronghold against the Qing Government, with commerce clustered mainly on Hong Kong Island, and it was only during the following decade, as population began to increase, that the western part of the peninsula saw any significant development (ibid.). The leasing of the New Territories (south of the Shenzhen River) and of the outlying islands for 99 years started in 1898, providing much-needed land for an expanding population, as well as serving as a military barrier. However, developing the land on this part of the city gave rise to many problems; major issues were the resolution of land ownership disputes with indigenous residents and the rise of land speculation, especially as the population continued to grow, fed by population movements arising from instability in the nearby Guangdong province and the Sino-Japanese war. Feng Shui played a major role in these disputes (Emmons 1992; Hayes 2006; Ho 2018), as detailed in Chapter 4. Ultimately, the Colonial Government resolved to focus its development interventions in the part of the New Territories closer to Kowloon urban area (cleverly renamed ‘New Kowloon’), recognising that its proximity to Old British Kowloon and Hong Kong Island would render its inhabitants more well-disposed towards Western rules and regulations than the villagers in more remote parts of the territories (Hayes 2006); here, amongst other developments, the Kowloon Tong Garden City was built in the 1920s. But when Hong Kong’s economic growth accelerated, after World War Two, the New Territories became again an indispensable source of land, ‘essential to the further development’ of the city (ibid., 2).

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Hong Kong’s development since the Second World War has been extraordinary. Its growth during the 1960s was particularly pronounced, linked with the expansion of the export-led manufacturing industry (Chiu 2016a). Hong Kong’s population grew from around 860,000 in 1943 to 2.25 million in 1953, largely as a result of migration from the mainland after the foundation of the PRC in 1949: by 1986, it had reached 5.5 million people and today stands at more than 7 million. To accommodate its growing population, the government implemented a programme of high-density development, which comprised the construction of the first- and second-generation new towns (six in total), all built in the New Territories between the 1960s and 1970s (see Fig. 2.7). New town development dominated Hong Kong’s urban planning from the 1950s to the 1970s as the government aimed to address the severe housing shortage and, at the same time, provide a better living environment for that part of its population living in poor housing conditions (Chiu 2016a). Before the renewal programme, the ‘physical setting of the New Territories had remained largely unchanged as it had been throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties’, and so had its ‘social setting of a traditional southern Chinese agrarian society based on a rice-farming socio-economy’ (Lung et al. 2005, 1). However, the building of the new towns required the

Fig. 2.7 Sha Tin new town (Credit David Collier)

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removal of some old villages as well as the replacement of buildings and other structures ‘on the fringes of the New Town boundaries’ (Hayes 2006, 101). This could only be accomplished through careful negotiation with villagers, who were often preoccupied by the fate of the ancestral hall, temples, Feng Shui groves and family graves (ibid.). The development of industrial and residential areas was accompanied by the improvement and construction of transport facilities, which enhanced Hong Kong’s role as an entrepôt and facilitated the dispersion of population from the dense and overcrowded urban areas to the New Territories (Ho 2018). Because of Hong Kong’s topography, its many hills and steep slopes and its dearth of flat developable land, land reclamation played an important part in the territory’s expansion,1 with many new developments occurring on reclaimed land adjoining Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon peninsula and The New Territories. The reclamation of land in the New Territories helped the government ‘[…] avoid paying large amounts of compensation in land resumption and resistance from indigenous residents’ as it ‘could solve the land ownership disputes and fund the development of new towns by auctioning off newly reclaimed land’ (ibid., 190). With just a few exceptions, all land in Hong Kong belongs to the government. The colonial administration used land as a source of revenue through land auctions from the 1950s onwards, with the aim of reducing its dependence on British financial aid for the territory. Auctions subsequently became the ‘dominant method of land disposal’ before and after the 1997 handover. Their importance dipped between 2002 and 2009 and again in 2011/2012 as a result of market downturns: during these periods, tendering represented a more cautious and controlled approach to rising land revenues (Chiu 2016b, 163). The 1970s and 1980s were ‘heydays in Hong Kong’s land development history’, when the combination of manufacturing growth, a zonal planning system with limited public input, and a lack of concern over the impacts of land reclamation handed the government enormous power ‘to create land effectively and to exercise fully its property rights as the sole landowner’ (ibid., 180). But by the 1980s, local manufacturing production had begun to slow and by the 1990s it had shrunk considerably, with many plants relocating across the border, along the Pearl River Delta. This

1 Hong Kong’s first large-scale land reclamation programmes began in the 1850s.

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prompted a restructuring in Hong Kong’s economy that contributed to its rise to the status of a global city (Chiu and Lui 2009). The diminished significance of manufactory in the local economy coupled with the relocation of Hong Kong’s manufacturers and the subsequent rescaling in their production ‘paved the way for the formation of a global city-region with Hong Kong becoming the centre of control, marketing and business services’ (ibid., 53). The government focused on enhancing trading and financial activities; it built a new international airport (relocating it from the city centre to one of the outlying islands—Lantau) to promote the city’s commercial and financial role, and expanded higher education facilities to align the skills of the population to the city’s economic diversification strategy (Ho 2018). By the mid-1990s, Hong Kong’s per capita income exceeded not only that of China but also many European countries (World Bank 1995 data). Programmes to increase housing supply continued and, given the constraints in land availability, demand was mainly satisfied through high-density and high-rise development (Staley 1994). Between the 1980s and 1990s, the third generation new towns were built to accommodate a population that was expected to reach 6.2 million by 1996; whilst two of them were still located in the New Territories, one was developed in Lantau Island to accompany the construction of the new airport (Ho 2018). At the same time, attention returned to the main urban areas where land reclamation along the harbour—a heavily congested area with many dilapidated buildings—started in the middle of the 1980s (Chiu 2016b). The handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 was a turning point in the city’s history, but a shift in its relationship with the mainland had already begun twenty years earlier, impacting the city’s territorial development. As China started implementing its economic reform in the late 1970s, the intensification in cross-border trade and investment led to the urbanisation of the corridor between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Hong Kong–China relations were strengthened not only through the process of political change, initiated with the 1984 agreement between the UK and the PRC which confirmed post-1997 Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong, but also by the city’s transformation into a global financial centre (Chiu and Lui 2009). From the mid-1990s onwards, city planning sought to promote connectivity with southern China (Chiu 2016b): new transport development linked Hong Kong with Shenzhen and eastern Guangdong, and eventually with the Pearl River West (with the development of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge completed

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in 2018). These plans and links aimed to strengthen regional cooperation and economic advantage (Ho 2018), with Hong Kong and Macao included in a wider plan for the Greater Pearl River Delta from 2008. Indeed, Kong Kong’s ‘[…] economic development is increasingly embedded in China’s grander national marketization and “going global” projects’, so much so that it is becoming ‘a Chinese global city’ (Chiu and Lui 2009, 130). Since the handover, important development projects have also continued to transform the city. Two new core districts at West Kowloon (on reclaimed land) and South East Kowloon (on the site of the former city centre airport) have key roles in the city’s economic growth whilst also delivering much-needed housing, cultural and commercial facilities. New Development Areas in the northern part of the New Territories, contributing to the decentralising of the population, are now planned with greater attention to the quality of residential space and protection of the environment, with attention also given to sensitivities around Feng Shui (Wang et al. 2017). Hong Kong has also embraced the ‘smart city’ and sustainability agendas, delivering incremental empowerment of the public within the planning process (Chiu 2016b). Yet the lack of developable land remains a major problem in the long-term planning and development of the city, sustaining a list of critical challenges. Amongst these, the lack of development land coupled with incredibly high housing demand has resulted in spiralling housing costs, with price-to-income ratios exceeding 16:1, representing ‘one of the biggest social issues in Hong Kong today’ (ibid., 182).

2.4

Case Study Themes

The pace of change in Guangdong and Hong Kong over the last 200 years has been extraordinary: Guangdong never left Chinese control but was subject to powerful external influences as successive governments pursued radically different political and economic agendas and therefore different relationships with the West and with its regional neighbours. Hong Kong, a coastal backwater until the middle of the nineteenthcentury, provided colonialists with a foothold in China and provided Chinese migrants with respite from the political turmoil in the wider Guangdong province. Hong Kong never turned its back on the mainland, but Chinese attention was drawn to domestic political matters for the first 100 years of Hong Kong’s colonial development. Thereafter, the manner of the

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territory’s return became an important geopolitical issue and also raised questions over Hong Kong identity and how disruptive, culturally and politically, reunification would be after the extended period of separation. It was noted at the beginning of this chapter that the contrasting political histories of these different parts of China were expected to impact the status and form of Feng Shui, suppressing or promoting its use because of prevailing political and social controls and objectives. This complicates the broader picture, presented in Chapter 1, that modernity is itself a threat to tradition, with tradition being reinvented or reimagined for new times and new societies but with a weaker rootedness in deeper belief, therefore becoming less genuine, more superficial and less authentic. Absolute spaces are anchored in belief and social needs arising from everyday life; abstract spaces are characterised by façadism, by culture made complicit in, and dominated by, the extraction of value through new forms of capitalist production. In the case study chapters, we track this theorised shift from absolute to abstract space, read in the ways that Feng Shui is used, and therefore consider what is meant by cultural or ‘constructive’ authenticity (Wang 1999) in cities. That tracking is achieved through attention to the themes emerging from Chapter 1. 2.4.1

Scales of Feng Shui

The first theme is scales of influence, namely: domestic/private spaces and urban/public spaces. These were described in some detail in the last chapter. But whilst the longer imprint of Feng Shui on the built environment can be categorised according to these scales, an analysis of its contemporary impact needs to include a third focus—commercial spaces—so as to capture the role of Feng Shui in contemporary urban processes and how commercial actors, contracted designers, regulators and private or public clients collectively or separately consider issues of geomancy and why they are motivated to do so. Large-scale urban transformation has been a feature of economic change across China and Hong Kong and it is important that the role of Feng Shui in commercial spaces—including residential development and office complexes—is examined as the motivations of key actors in development processes gives some indication of the relevance and role of Feng Shui in modern city-building.

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2.4.2

Actors and ‘Places as Cultural Praxis’

The second theme, hinted at above, is the motivation of actors—when regulating, building and inhabiting new spaces—to utilise Feng Shui. This general theme was related, in Chapter 1, to the idea of places and landscapes as cultural praxis, the unity between building and dwelling, and the social production of space. Moreover, the domestication of space leads to the imprinting of significant values. But what are those values and how have they changed over time: in particular, has there been a shift from values indicating appropriation of space for need, to domination of space for abstract purpose? Looking at changing motivation is part of a broader investigation of the transition from absolute to abstract spaces. 2.4.3

Absolute and Abstract Space

The idea that a binary exists between absolute and abstract space is borrowed from Lefebvre (1991). Space developed in accordance with nature and with the aim of serving both the spiritual and physical needs of communities—i.e. appropriated to support everyday life—can be considered an absolute space. In contrast, space that is dominated and produced by political, institutional and economic elites for the purpose of economic exchange, as a homogenised and interchangeable commodity, can be considered an abstract space. According to Lefebvre (1991, 110), ‘the history of space […] proceeds from nature to abstraction’: sacred and lived spaces are gradually replaced by private property and exchange relationships. Meaning shifts, as does the power to fix that meaning—as the domestication of space is no longer led by those who dwell but rather by those who dominate for economic reasons, and who therefore seek to maximise the extraction of value. 2.4.4

Authenticity and Relevance

The idea of a shift to ‘abstraction’ may suggest that original meaning, or link to need, has been weakened. But more generally, change in the use of Feng Shui—examined in the cases—prompts questions as to the meaning of authenticity: whether authentic objects or constructs are necessarily static or at least anchored in some fundamental and broadly agreed root that remains intact irrespective of modern interpretation. Like a religion, authenticity in Feng Shui might be measured in the retention of core

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principles or dogma. But dogma is not always celebrated: it can become irrelevant, over-taken by changing attitudes, shifting needs and new interpretations. Linking to the work of Bourdieu, if the habitus shifts then human relationships with the world around us will also move. People’s values and thought processes are not static. These questions provide us with our final destination: the authenticity or retained relevance of Feng Shui to modern life. This destination is reached in Chapter 5. The two case studies track along a conceptual path that begins with the substantive focus on scales of influence and the actors who carry values into the built environment: those who build and dwell. The focus on cultural praxis leads us into a consideration of the shift from nature to abstraction, or from the absolute spaces of Feng Shui’s past to the abstract spaces of its present—read in projects and interviews with key actors. And all of this builds into a final analysis, in the last chapter, of authenticity and the continued relevance of Feng Shui in Chinese cities.

2.5

Research Strategy

There are numerous possible ways to discern the influence of Feng Shui on the layout of buildings, streets and public spaces, the most obvious of which is direct observation and ‘visual methodologies’ that use maps and photos as source data (Rose 2016). This approach would enable the cataloguing of influence, but does not expose the rationales behind built forms, whether underpinned by a Chinese aesthetic or representing a genuine attempt to harness vital energies. There has already been a great deal of cataloguing of the physical evidence of Feng Shui, or equivalents, across China and Southeast Asia. Another possibility was the perusal of official documents—including planning policies, committee minutes and development briefs—to identify ‘underlying themes’ (Bryman 2016, 563) and ascertain whether Feng Shui was a ‘material consideration’ when discussing development options. However, Feng Shui is never (or seldom) a codified planning consideration but rather a factor in wider decision-making environments, becoming apparent during dealings with communities and development clients. There was no expectation that Feng Shui would be written into official documents, or indeed that there would be official planning policies intended to protect or promote good Feng Shui. Direct influences cannot be read in policy: whilst there are likely to be building code or sight-line strictures, the same is not true of Feng Shui. And even if such policies existed, their identification in a plan

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or zoning ordinance does not reveal their provenance: how they came to be there and how they came to be as they are. Indeed, whilst photodocumentation can offer a ‘precise record of material reality’ (Rose 2016, 310) and examination of official documents might confirm the importance attached to Feng Shui, alongside density considerations, neither of these methods can expose the cultural praxis of which Feng Shui outcomes are an expression. Therefore this research utilised expert interviews with key actors. The objective was to ‘learn about the social world [of Feng Shui] first hand’ (Burgess 1984, 2) in our two case study areas. Interviews with different development actors and acknowledged experts in the field were used to triangulate perspectives on the use of Feng Shui during the planning and development of urban and rural change. This phenomenological perspective, centred on the awareness and consciousness of participants, sought to unveil ‘the way in which participants interpret[ed] their experience and construct[ed] reality’ (ibid., 3), reflecting on the meaning attached to Feng Shui generally and in different examples of its use explored in the interviews. Those interviews took the form of conversations, structured around themes and ideas but also giving participants the opportunity to ‘develop their answers outside a structured format’ (ibid., 2). This strategy gave space during the interviews for the deeper exploration of incidental cases and anecdotes: it also allowed participants to go ‘off at tangents’ (Bryman 2016, 466) and reveal what they personally saw as important in relation to Feng Shui and its role in how people build and dwell. Further details on the interviews, and their analysis, is provided below. Broadly, we sought to track through the scales of influence noted in Chapter 1; to examine different actor roles in development; to tease out interesting cases as these emerged; to focus attention on interaction between communities, designers, developers, clients and regulators; and to drill down into the connections between Feng Shui as a consideration in development versus ‘other’ objectives, social and economic. These points of focus provided a loose and flexible script, necessary because of the ultimate goal of comparing the Guangdong and Hong Kong cases and therefore having common themes across these areas. Interviews were complemented with a broader programme of research comprising site visits (many of the interviews were conducted ‘on site’ with interviewees drawing attention to nearby buildings and development stories), the examination of official documents (usually to confirm key dates, development partners and development outcomes) and the

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embedding of the research in a critical reading of key literature, so as to situate our cases in the longer narrative of Chinese development and Feng Shui. The purpose of that wider programme was to provide critical focus, contextualise and triangulate details emerging from the interviews.

2.6

Fieldwork and Analysis

Interview subjects were selected to provide broad representation of different built environment sectors as well as representatives of the local communities. Full lists of interview participants are provided in the next two chapters. Interviewees tended to have at least some knowledge of how Feng Shui might directly or indirectly affect projects; others were acknowledged Feng Shui experts and made a living from advising on the promotion or potential disruption of Feng Shui. Willingness to participate in the project owed something to direct interest in the topic, potentially biasing findings towards the importance or value of Feng Shui. But respondents tended nevertheless to be critically reflective. Existing contacts in Guangdong and Hong Kong were used to identify potential interview subjects. These included contacts in the university and local government sectors, who were able to help us ‘snowball’ into the design, building and community sectors. Initial contact was made by email, with the purpose of explaining the focus of our work and inviting participation. The vast majority of interviews were conducted face to face: this was not possible for five of the interviews where timing made it impractical to meet in Guangdong or Hong Kong. Skype and WeChat interviews were conducted in three cases and a further two interviewees provided detailed written responses to questions that were developed, for that purpose, from our interview themes. All of these interviews were conducted between May 2018 and January 2019. Topic lists were provided to participants in advance, which sometimes prompted email exchanges, with clarifications sought: ‘would you like me to tell you about…’/‘Might you be interested in…’/‘I have a story about…’, etc. As well as tracking through the broad themes noted in the previous sections, the interviews sought grounding in the practice or role of the interviewee: ‘how does Feng Shui affect what you do’/‘how have outcomes been shaped in projects you have been involved in’/‘based on that experience, how do you perceive or understand…’, etc. The challenge in these sorts of interviews is to keep conversations broadly on track and to time. The shortest interview was just over 37 minutes; the longest

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ran to almost 2 hours. Inevitably, some interviewees wanted to focus on projects they had been involved in or events they were familiar with, which had particular meaning for them and were viewed as ‘speaking’ to broader concerns. There was always a danger that we would run out of time and need to stop the conversation. But most interviews tackled most topics, providing a basis for the themed analysis contained in the next two chapters. The two written statements provided useful information and perspectives on the themes but did not provide an opportunity for deeper probing. With the consent of participants, all face-to-face and video interviews were recorded and later transcribed verbatim. The Hong Kong interviews were conducted in English and the Guangdong ones in Chinese, with selective translation of the transcripts. The coding of interviews— to identify key themes and ‘informants’ perspectives’ (Bodgan and Biklen 1982)—linked loosely to our conceptualisation but was more generally concerned with Feng Shui in the past and in the present and with manifest influences at different scales. A general analytical process was then followed: a thematic sorting that aimed to make sense of local stories and anecdotes—to extract reflections on cultural attachment versus real estate/market logic. We kept in sight the attitudes and values that seem to ‘explain’ behaviours, commercial goals and built outcomes; and also looked at the blurring, or intersection, between cultural and market behaviours. The latter often took the form of real estate marketing strategies that emphasised the commercial or residential value of good Feng Shui. Across all interviews, there was a clear focus on ‘actors’ and ‘outputs’—who was doing what and why were they doing it. For example, how do communities respond to plans and to development/when there is conflict, how is this explained/whose interests are served by Feng Shui or by extracting concessions from public or private actors, etc. And then, what is the interest of designers in Feng Shui/to what extent does Feng Shui align with functional logic, etc. For development clients (including superior landlords or building occupants), is ‘belief’ in Feng Shui direct or proxy, driven by perception or a broader market or expectation of good geomancy, etc. Equally, for regulators, to what extent is Feng Shui part of a wider decision-making environment/to what extent is it functional, embedded in good planning, etc. In terms of outputs, narratives were sought that reflected on domestic, commercial or public spaces. This inevitably meant reliance on personal experience for domestic spaces and a weighting towards commercial spaces: these reflections often drew

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attention to what the client wanted, how communities responded and how regulators mediated. Public realm close to commercial development was also a point of focus, often because commercial clients ‘genuinely’ concerned with Feng Shui would recognise the connections and flows that needed to be supported between that space owned and controlled by them and the wider urban fabric. Good Feng Shui cannot be achieved ‘within site’ but is rather the product of holistic thinking at a much broader scale. Care was taken to ensure that the stories contained in interviews were not lost through coding and extraction and that clear links were established between the conversations and the wider narratives that we wished to interrogate: narratives of scale, people, the commercial abstraction of space, rural populations confronted with urbanisation and authenticity. This was very much a grounded study, underpinned by previous rounds of research and by conversations that predate this work. The notion of cultural artefacts being appropriated for the purpose of value extraction through urban development is not a new one, but central to studies of urban heritage, art and gentrification. Preliminary investigations in Hong Kong gave this study the same grounding, setting up an opportunity to investigate the contemporary meaning of Feng Shui in the Chinese city.

References Bodgan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (1982). Qualitative Research for Education. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Bryman, A. (2016). Social Research Methods (5th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burgess, R. G. (1984). In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research. London: Routledge. Carroll, J. M. (2005). Edges of Empires. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chiu, R. (2016a). Land Supply and New Housing Provision in Hong Kong. In N. Gurran, N. Gallent, & R. Chiu (Eds.), Politics, Planning and Housing Supply in Australia, England and Hong Kong (pp. 185–212). London: Routledge. Chiu, R. (2016b). Power and Decision Making in Hong Kong’s Planning System. In N. Gurran, N. Gallent, & R. Chiu (Eds.), Politics, Planning and Housing Supply in Australia, England and Hong Kong (pp. 158–184). London: Routledge.

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Chiu, S., & Lui, T. (2009). Hong Kong: Becoming a Chinese Global City. London: Routledge. Emmons, C. F. (1992). Hong Kong’s Feng Shui: Popular Magic in a Modern Urban Setting. The Journal of Popular Culture, 26(1), 39–50. Hayes, J. (2006). The Great Difference: Hong Kong’s New Territories and Its People 1898–2004. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Ho, P. (2018). Making Hong Kong. A History of its Urban Development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Jia, Y., & Gan, Q. (2013). Guangdong Cultural Industry from the Perspective of Region and Structure—Analysis of the Evolution Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Guangdong Cultural Industry. Journal of South China Normal University, 45(2), 107–112. Lau, R. (2019). The Political Predicament of the Pan-Democrats in Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule: Being Victims or Beneficiaries? Asian Education and Development Studies, 8(4), 498–510. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Li, Z., Ma, L. J. C., & Xue, D. (2009). An African Enclave in China: the Making of a New Transnational Urban Space. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 50(6), 699–719. Li, Z., Xu, J., & Yeh, A. G. (2014). State Rescaling and the Making of City-Regions in the Pearl River Delta. China, Environment and Planning C-Government and Policy, 32(1), 129–143. Loh, C. (2006). Hong Kong’s Relations with China: The Future of “One Country, Two Systems”. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 73(1), 293–316. Lung, P. Y. D., Lee, H. Y., & Chow, T. Y. E. (2005). The Changing “Rural” Setting of Hong Kong’s New Territories in the 20th Century [Conference presentation]. 15th ICOMOS General Assembly and International Symposium: Monuments and Sites in Their Setting—Conserving Cultural Heritage in Changing Townscapes and Landscapes, Xi’an, China. Mathews, G. (1997). Hèunggóngyàhn: On the Past, Present, and Future of Hong Kong Identity. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 29(3), 3–13. Munn, C. (2009). Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1880. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Ngo, T. W. (1999). Colonialism in Hong Kong Revisited. In T. W. Ngo (Ed.), Hong Kong’s History. State and Society Under Colonial Rules (pp. 1–12). London: Routledge. Rose, G. (2016). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials (4th ed.). London: Sage. Rossabi, M. (2014). A History of China. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Sang, L. W. (2009). Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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Situ, S., & Xu, G. (2005). A Brief History of Guangdong Development (Guangdong Fazhan Shilue). Lingnan Literature and History, 2005(2), 1–10. Staley, S. R. (1994). Planning Rules and Urban Economic Performance: The Case of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/index/index.html. Tian, L. (2008). The Chengzhongcun Land Market in China: Boon or Bane?—A Perspective on Property Rights. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(2), 282–304. Wang, A. Q., Chan, E. H. W., Yeung, S. C. W., & Han, J. B. (2017). Urban Fringe land Use Transitions in Hong Kong: From New Towns to New Development Areas. Procedia Engineering, 198, 707–719. Wang, N. (1999). Rethinking Authenticity in Tourism Experience. Annals of Tourism Research, 26(2), 349–370. Wang, Y. (2019). Local Identity in a Global City: Hong Kong Localist Movement on Social Media. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36(5), 419–433. Wei, L., Yan, X., & Liu, Y. (2008). Research on the Urban Social Spatial Structure of Guangzhou in the Qing Dynasty. Acta Geographica Sinica, 63(6), 613–624. World Bank Open Data. https://data.worldbank.org. Wright, D. C. (2001). The History of China. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Wu, J., & Zhong, H. (2007) The Fengshui Beliefs of the Cantonese in the Ming and Qing Dynasties: Local Interests and Social Disputes (Mingqing Guangdongren de Fengshuiguan: Difang Liyi yu Shehui Jiufen). Academic Research, 2007 (2), 98–104 and 160. Zhou, D. (2012). Interpretation of Urban Planning and Spatial Creation in Guangzhou During the Period of the Republic of China (Zhonghua Minguo Shiqi Guangzhou Chengshi Guihua yu Kongjian Jianshe Jiedu). Guihuashi, 28(4), 122–125. Zhou, X. (2005). The Evolution of Guangzhou Urban Form (Guangzhou Chengshi Xingtai Yanjin). Beijing: China Construction Industry Press.

CHAPTER 3

Feng Shui in Mainland China: Guangdong Province

Abstract This is the first of two case study chapters. It begins by looking back at Guangdong’s longer history before turning to the province’s contemporary relationship with Feng Shui. That analysis draws on interviews with key informants working in the built environment and is organised into three parts: past uses and attitudes of Feng Shui, current uses and attitudes, and Feng Shui in our three critical domains: domestic, commercial and public spaces. The case illustrates reform pressures on Feng Shui: the extraction of science and pseudoscience from superstition, and the political turn against Feng Shui versus the force of social demand that continues to make it relevant in the planning and design of the built environment. The chapter ends by noting the long overlay of absolute with abstract space, with Feng Shui instrumentalised in pursuit of political control in the past and economic gain today. Keywords Guangdong · Case study · Interviews · Uses and attitudes · Spaces

Guangdong borders the South China Sea and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau. It is the southernmost part of China with a population of more than 113 million in an area of 179,800 square kilometres. It sits to the south of Jiangxi and Fujian, the provinces © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Madeddu and X. Zhang, Feng Shui and the City, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0847-6_3

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in which the two major schools of Feng Shui—the Form and Compass Schools—developed (Mak and So 2015) (see Fig. 2.2). Despite being the birthplace of modern industrial China (see Chapter 2), it is replete with ancient culture, hanging onto the past whilst firmly grasping the future. The province’s GDP has consistently been the highest in China since 1989 and it hosts three of the country’s seven Special Economic Zones. Its development and wealth have attracted migrants from other provinces for the last 40 years (Xu and Yeh 2003), who contribute greatly to the cultural mix of Guangdong’s major cities—notably Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhongshan—and give them a clear edge in terms of human capital and technological innovation (JLL 2018). Balancing the modern economic miracle is a rich historic legacy. Guangdong is considered one of the cradles of Chinese civilisation before the unification of the country under Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 to 210 BC) in 221 BC. But the history of Guangdong is dominated by its commercial and cultural exchanges with foreign powers. It has always been the centre of trade: the ‘Maritime Silk Road’ begins in Guangdong and during the Ming and early Qing dynasties, the ‘Haijin’ policy (literally ‘sea ban’) forbade any other provinces from engaging in international trade. Hence, Guangdong became the one and only gateway to China. Today, the province’s connectivity to the rest of the world can be measured in the proportion of the 45.4 million overseas Chinese—now spread across more than one hundred countries—who trace their roots to Guangdong. Two-thirds are from the province (Zhuang 2015). This chapter explores the relationship between Feng Shui and the built environment in Guangdong. It is divided into four parts. The chapter begins by providing an account of the early history of Feng Shui in the province, building on the general overview offered in the opening chapter. The second and third parts then draw on the research introduced in the last chapter to firstly reveal the influences exerted by different actors and groups and secondly explore the various spatial domains of Feng Shui. Interview reflections are used to expose the beliefs, attitudes and values behind spatial outcomes in the past and the present. The chapter concludes on the question of authenticity: whether the changes tracked in the research have weakened the underpinning connection of Feng Shui to its deeper roots, with it becoming an instrument of abstraction, or whether it continues to retain relevance in a wider cultural sense.

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The Early Development of Guangdong and the Influence of Feng Shui on Its Historic Built Environment

Guangdong’s economic history, and its status as a centre of trade, is fundamental to the province’s relationship to Feng Shui. The southward expansion of the Qin dynasty resulted in the establishment of a garrison town at Panyu, close to modern-day Guangzhou, in 214 BC. Ancient Panyu faced the Pearl River to its south and was backed by the Yuexiu Mountain to the north (Wei et al. 2008). The mix of lower and higher ground provided the city with fertile land for cultivation and higher ground on which to graze animals or source wood and other materials. Its internal layout complied with the pattern of a chessboard, symbolising power, justice and harmony (between locations and functions on the board) and supplying sunshine and ventilation by virtue of the flows that a grid pattern permits (Situ and Li 1998). The town’s population comprised a mix of minority ethnic groups and the general area was considered, by the Han Chinese of the Central Plains, as remote and barbarous. Although the region was brought under the unified control of the Qin dynasty, it remained largely autonomous, managing its own affairs (Zhou 2016) and its burgeoning trade links, which extended through the Middle East to the Roman Empire. But like the Han to the north, the population of the region believed strongly in the immortal souls of their ancestors bestowing good fortune on those engaging in appropriate forms of worship. The Han Shu—or the Book of Han—records the anger of local people when Emperor Qin Shi Huang prohibited them from offering sacrifice to their ancestors (Ban 1962). A form of ancestor worship that involved coffins being attached to high cliffs—in the hope that the spirits of ancestors in the sky would protect their descendants (Chen 2005)—had developed separately from Han burial rituals and grave siting, but the idea that proper treatment of the dead would benefit the living provided a shared cultural referent and one that made the coastal population open to the broader prescriptions of Feng Shui, now being introduced by Han migrants. Following the fall of the Qin dynasty in 206 BC, Panyu became the capital of the Nanyue Kingdom. It was expanded along a central axis, with city walls enveloping a government administrative compound. In Chinese, ‘city’ is a contraction of two words, ‘cheng’ and ‘shi’, meaning

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wall and market. Because early Panyu lacked a significant civilian population it also lacked a market: it was more a garrison than a town, existing to exert military control (Li 1986). This only changed when the Han, united under Emperor Han Wudi (156–87 BC), defeated the Nanyue Kingdom and brought the province under their jurisdiction. Panyu subsequently became both a Han city and the official centre for foreign trade for China’s Han rulers. It also became the starting point for the maritime Silk Road and a magnet for migrants during the period of the Six Dynasties (222 to 589 AD). Large numbers of Han—dignitaries and nobles amongst them—fled northern wars and headed to the relative sanctuary of Panyu (Zhang 2018). By 264 AD, Panyu had become Guangzhou, the political, economic and cultural centre of Han rule in southern China. The earlier local practices of ancestor worship, placing coffins in high cliffs, were generally displaced by the search for auspicious grave sites, introduced by Han migrants. Likewise the practice of siting and orientating homes—according to the prescriptions of the Form and Compass schools—was also introduced from the north. A home location that would deliver good fortune was very important to a migrant population that had struggled with frequent wars (especially during the turbulent period of the Sixteen Kingdoms between 304 and 439 AD) and was now looking to find peace and greater security in what remained one of China’s more peripheral regions, culturally if not economically. Therefore, Feng Shui was a source of stability and security for the Han arrivals who introduced its prescriptions and beliefs across the region. The Han, and others who copied them, sought protection from their ancestors—and it was from that seed that Feng Shui practice took root in this part of China (Chen 2005). Guangdong’s rural landscape bears the marks of this early imprint, in both the proliferation of Feng Shui forests (Coggins and Minor 2018) and traditional villages (Tam 2011). Forests are an integral part of the ‘Han Chinese rural landscape’ (Coggins et al. 2012, 52), with cosmological significance that was defended by local leaders who meted out punishment to those wilfully damaging forests. But in Hewu village, northern Guangdong, it was held that any damage to trees would cause the ‘violator to suffer bodily harm’ (Coggins and Minor 2018, 15) without the intervention of any third party, such was the symbiotic relationship with nature. Entrances to villages in the province were ‘oriented to capture chthonic energy’ (Tam 2011, 33) and their broader layouts followed geomantic rules, invariably facing south and being fronted

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by water (Hammond 1992, 98). Xiqi village in Taishan county, for example, followed these principles with its ‘skywell’ houses ‘set in a tight rectangular grid’ (ibid., 99). Guangzhou continued to expand during the Tang dynasty (618 to 907 AD) and became the established capital of Guangdong, marrying administrative function with economic growth. Feng Shui practices, which had gained influence during the period of the Six Dynasties, now became a basis of city planning and expansion and also an accepted source of continued prosperity for the city and its rulers. The Han brought Buddhism to Guangdong and historic records show how local Feng Shui masters were invariably consulted during the siting of temples. Those temples were not merely places of worship but gave protection, against misfortune, to nearby communities, if sited correctly. The Han migrants’ appetite for security had, over time, been supplanted by a desire for commercial success. As the port grew, so did the wealth of its inhabitants, with Feng Shui becoming a guarantor of future prosperity. The Old Book of Tang (Liu 945 AD) cites numerous and frequent examples of local clans selecting sites for new homes and tombs in consultation with masters and according to ancestral Feng Shui manuals. The heads of those clans secured their wealth from commerce and trade, sometimes necessitating long business trips. They would invariably be advised on the timing of those trips by Feng Shui masters. Towards the end of the Tang dynasty, the wars in the Central Plains intensified, triggering another wave of Han migration. Again, the composition of that migration included many merchants, scholars and bureaucrats. Belief in Feng Shui as a source of success and good fortune was evidenced during this time in the regularity with which wealthy families refurbished and rebuilt family shrines and ancestral tombs, guided by the cosmological calculations of consultant masters. Competition for auspicious sites was a cause of significant social strife and even outright conflict between Guangzhou families (Huang 2005). The Song and Yuan dynasties (960 to 1368 AD) brought comprehensive and large-scale development across the whole of Guangdong. It was during this period that ethnic divisions became less apparent, largely because of assimilation of minorities into the Han majority—leading to the growth of ethnically mixed towns. Acceptance of Feng Shui was now widespread, and reflected in both the layout and decoration of homes (Huang 2005). The region’s development was also accelerated: foreign trade was further encouraged and promoted, mining was added to the

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existing repertoire of economic activities, and large areas of marsh along the Pearl River were reclaimed for agriculture. Six other port cities along the coast were also opened up to foreign trade, substantially increasing economic activity. Guangzhou, however, remained pre-eminent and was, during this period, subject to significant urban-scale transformations with the building of palaces, royal gardens and expansions both east and west—establishing the skeleton of the modern city. The Ming and early Qing dynasties—from 1368 AD to the start of the 1840–1842 Opium War—saw a continuation of this general narrative. Guangdong’s economy kept growing and diversifying, into handicrafts, iron smelting, ceramics, textiles, shipbuilding and food processing (Li 1986). But at this point, the narrative splits—between the catastrophe of the Opium War and its wider consequences for China and the continuing development, economic and political, of Guangdong province, as the seat of reform and modernisation. The modern development of Guangdong was introduced in the last chapter and provides the backcloth for the research presented in the rest of this chapter. The key message, however, is that the merchant capitalism of Guangdong took Feng Shui as its guide, displaying pious respect of ancestors and planning its business activity according to advice from the heavens. The commercial guilds that formed in the province, centred on the trades and industries that grew up during the later imperial dynasties, retained an institutional memory of Feng Shui’s role in delivering business success, often distributing that memory overseas through the millions of Guangdong Chinese who now reside around the world. Business and administration melds together in Guangdong: ‘all officials do business, and all those who do business are officials’ (Situ and Xu 2005, 5). Feng Shui is afforded special significance, although now reshaped by a further two centuries of political, economic and social transformation. The separation of Guangdong from Hong Kong, also recounted in the last chapter, suggests a modernisation of ancient beliefs that progressed differently in these two places, being subject to fundamentally different forces and controls. But how has belief in Feng Shui changed and what influence does it continue to exert on this part of mainland China?

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3.2 Uses of and Attitudes Towards Feng Shui in Guangdong In this section and the next, we examine Guangdong’s relationship to Feng Shui in terms of how key groups and actors think about its importance and in terms of spatial outcomes. Interviews with fourteen built environment professionals and local residents were undertaken between August 2018 and January 2019. The expert interviews were with local officials, planning and architecture academics, architects, Feng Shui consultants and real estate developers. A list of interviewees is provided in Table 3.1. Abbreviations for respondents are used in the text, indicating group membership and interview code. Interviews centred on those topics are highlighted in Chapter 2. Whilst the analysis primarily draws on responses from participants in this research, references are also made to a wider literature. 3.2.1

Past Use and Attitudes Towards Feng Shui

It was noted earlier that Feng Shui was brought to Guangdong by Han migrants, especially during the period of the Six Dynasties. In the past, Feng Shui bestowed royal authority, supported the function of the Table 3.1 Interviews (Guangdong Province) Interview code

Profession/organisation

Date of interview

HCD (group with URP)

GD Housing and Construction Department GD Urban and Rural Planning Department GD Academic (Planning) GD Academic (Architecture) GD Architect GD Feng Shui Practitioner GD Feng Shui Practitioner GD Feng Shui Practitioner GD Feng Shui Practitioner GD Real Estate Developer GD Real Estate Developer GD Community Representative GD Community Representative

1 September 2018

URP (group with HCD) AP1 (via WeChat video) AA1 (via WeChat video) Arch FS1 FS2 (group with FS3) FS3 (group with FS2) FS4 RE1 RE2 CG1 (group with CG2) CG2 (group with CG1)

1 September 2018 15 October 2018 26 October 2018 3 September 2018 5 January 2019 8 January 2019 8 January 2019 16 January 2019 26 August 2018 27 August 2018 25 August 2018 25 August 2018

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local state, and was a framework for villagers and other local people to organise their daily lives and arrange their living spaces. Hence, these three groups—royalty, local gentry (running local government) and the wider ‘civilian’ population—were the key actors developing and using Feng Shui. Royal Authority Chapter 1 highlighted the importance of Feng Shui to imperial rule and its links with Daoism. Connecting celestial events to natural rhythms on earth, the Daoists devised a system of mapping vital energy flows or order to deliver spiritual harmony. That practice was adopted by emperors as basic environmental divination: […] many of the emperors in history believed in Feng Shui […] emperors hoped to explore the secrets of getting along with nature through Feng Shui, in hopes of ensuring the prosperity and long-term stability of the empire. In this sense, divination and environmental management combined, and integrated into urban planning. (AP1)

Feng Shui was viewed as an instrument of government: it could strengthen royal legitimacy, but also damage it if bad Feng Shui went untreated. Bad Feng Shui might arise from poor advice, sometimes resulting in the execution of a master, or if uncoordinated development were permitted that broke the flow of qi or directed that qi to a potential usurper. The Hongwu Emperor (Zhu Yuanzhang, 1328 to 1398 AD), founder of the Ming dynasty, for example, came to believe that qi rising from the valley town of Quanzhou in Guangdong was a direct threat to his authority. He therefore dispatched a Feng Shui master to the town, accompanied by the army, to undertake ‘corrective’ building work that would destroy the qi and end the threat (Wang 2001). The same emperor believed that the auspicious location, on the Yu Mountain, of a mausoleum containing an emperor of the Nanyue Kingdom would impair his qi. After consulting Feng Shui masters, he commissioned and built a 70-metre-high 5-storey pavilion on Yuexiu Mountain, watching over the mausoleum and suppressing its qi. The pavilion has been destroyed and rebuilt several times over the last 700 years and is now the site of the Guangzhou Museum (see Fig. 3.1).

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Fig. 3.1 Guangzhou Museum (Credit Author)

‘Official advocacy and encouragement of Feng Shui had a great influence on ancient urban planning in China’ (AP1) and that advocacy was taken as an official endorsement, resulting in a deeper embedding of Feng Shui across society, and also its use and respect in local administration. The Local Gentry and Government In China’s traditional sociopolitical structure, the magistrates’ control of rural communities was mediated through local gentries (Fei 1953). These were an educated class—a literati—of property owners and landlords who ‘[…] flourished as a class based at the intersection of the imperial state and the agrarian economy’, with the ruling authorities depending on them to ‘extend controls over, and appropriate resources from, the huge unwieldy agrarian expanse that was China’ (Skocpol 1979, 72). Members of this local gentry were invariably Han who had moved to Guangdong from the Central Plains. Their knowledge of Feng Shui and its complex geometries was itself a source of status and power: ‘at that time, it was a matter of pride to have some Feng Shui knowledge among the gentry class in Guangdong [and] many of the gentry were also Confucian scholars and Feng Shui masters’ (AA1).

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Within both royal courts and gentry households, Feng Shui provided a framework of belief and an instrument of control. Officials, as the representatives of royal authority, and the gentry viewed Feng Shui in much the same way: as a source of prosperity and stability, in both an economic and social sense, supporting a sense of well-being—and harmony—within the wider population. After active lobbying by the gentry during the Ming dynasty, officials sanctioned the construction of a Feng Shui tower close to the estuary of the Pearl River. Feng Shui masters, many of whom were members of the gentry, argued that qi flowing from the Central Plains became very weak by the time it reached the coast. Feng Shui pagodas were needed to act as ‘repeater stations’, amplifying the qi and extending its benefits to the south. For that reason, local officials and gentries built three pagodas at three auspicious locations close to the mouth of the river, and quarrying in nearby hills was prohibited, for the purpose of preserving the good Feng Shui supported by the pagodas (Qu 1985). During that same period, chronicles attributed any and all local advantages or propitious events—a good harvest, defeat of an enemy, avoidance of catastrophe such as the effects of an earthquake—to good Feng Shui. In that context, the gentry became the defenders of that advantage, seeing it embodied in rivers, forests, hills and buildings (Wu and Zhong 2007). The gentry and local officials were allied in a belief that the state of local Feng Shui would determine success in the imperial examination— the entry route to imperial service, and officialdom, since the mid-Tang dynasty (until its abolition in 1905). During the Ming dynasty, a poor run of results for candidates in Guangdong Gaoming County led to the erection of a Wenfeng (literati) Pagoda opposite the county academy. This was reported to have changed the fortunes of local candidates, noticeably increasing the pass rate (Qu 2003). Officials had a vested interest in the exams: local success was often attributed to their wise counsel and therefore a source of political promotion. Likewise, the gentry viewed the success of their own family members in the examinations as a source of esteem and local respect, even if those members were not actually assigned administrative jobs (AP1, AA1). Building pagodas became the normal response to ‘poor Feng Shui’ across Guangdong during the Ming and Qing dynasties: it reinforced official belief in good geomancy and was a source of confidence for the local population. Seventy-four pagodas were built in Guangdong during the Ming dynasty—ninety per cent of all pagodas built in China during that

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period (Guo 2001). Some have been preserved and today form part of the province’s modern urban landscape (see Fig. 3.2). One very common and significant impact of Feng Shui, especially during the Ming dynasty, was the avoidance of development close to the family tombs of local gentry. This sometimes caused urban growth to

Fig. 3.2 Feng Shui Pagoda, Shunde District, Guangzhou (Credit Hanlin Wen)

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snake around tomb sites or for towns and cities to become perforated by open, protected sites. The Huo family, for example, were important local gentry in Foshan Guangdong during this same dynasty. Records show that following negotiation between the family and local officials, plans to develop land near Xiqiao Mountain were scrapped, in order to preserve the good Feng Shui of the family tomb (Huo 2014). Mining activities were also affected by Feng Shui. Historic records reveal mining conflicts in and around the town of Zhaoqing (Tan and Xian 2001), with members of the gentry seeking bans on new mines or on the expansion of existing ones. They almost invariably won these battles, arguing that the damage caused by open-cast mining was a direct threat to the mountains, forests and rivers through which elemental forces flowed. However, there were also more prosaic motives behind these conflicts. The mining of traditional ink-stones became an important industry during the Qing dynasty. These stones were (and are still today) used for the grinding of inksticks (solidified ink) and for containing the liquid ink. Guangdong is a province rich in ink-stones and it was common for the gentry to confront any and all plans for mining with claims of disrupted Feng Shui. Wu and Zhong (2007) cite the example of a local official appointing a team of Feng Shui masters to test those claims and concluding, ultimately, that objections were grounded in the exclusion of the gentry from profit-sharing arrangements. A percentage of the profit from ink-stone mining went to the officials but not to the gentry. This exclusion was reconsidered and after several rounds of negotiating, the gentry took a bigger ‘cut’ of the profit than local government. But at the same time, general regulations were introduced to ensure no further disruption of Feng Shui. After these issues were resolved, the ink-stone industry in Guangdong began to prosper (Tan and Xian 2001). From the late Qing dynasty onwards, there were a growing number of cases of local gentries intervening in the development of economic activities, including farming and forestry. Whilst there may have been no direct economic motivation behind these interventions, the ink-stone episode seems to support the suspicion that interests were at least mixed, and interventions designed to preserve the balance of wealth and power by exploiting a general belief in Feng Shui for economic gain (Zhong 2007). The Civilian Population and Peasantry The wider population displayed both a functional attachment to Feng Shui, reflected in the planning and organisation of community spaces

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and homes, and a rootedness in ‘folklore’ systematised into divination ritual, much of which blended indigenous and Han traditions. Villagers in Guangdong regularly built temples, planted or preserved Feng Shui forests, dug ponds and erected ‘paifang’ (traditional arched gateways) to direct energy flows (Luo and Wang 2012). Arches were either connected to ancestral halls or marked public spaces where the achievements and virtues of ancestors were celebrated (FS2, FS3). Villagers’ homes were sometimes multi-family ‘weiwu’—walled houses—built by the ethnic Hakka people in northeastern Guangdong during a hundred-year period in the Qing dynasty (FS3). Weiwu were typically situated on gentle slopes, facing downwards, fronted by semicircular pools and backing on to semicircular Feng Shui forests (see Fig. 3.3). The centre-piece of these oval structures (see Knapp 1986, 45) was a raised area in the inner courtyard where all important rituals took place, including the worship of ancestors. Within the weiwu—as in other types of home—individual households observed Feng Shui practice—and sought to improve the flow of qi— through the placement of significant devices: bagua mirrors (round with octagonal wooden frames), bamboo flutes (displayed for the activation of energy), tortoise figures (against misfortune), peachwood swords (for Daoist exorcisms) and stones from Taishan (one of five sacred mountains,

Fig. 3.3 Weiwu house in Meizhou, Guangdong (Credit Author)

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symbolising birth and renewal) (FS3). It was noted in Chapter 1 that such objects often substituted for the more substantial alterations that might occur in the gardens and homes of wealthier households (Sun and Sun 2007). Indeed, these practices represented both a rescaling of Feng Shui principles—including auspicious shapes, such as the bagua, and materials often used in the planning and building of entire settlements—and a deeper attachment to symbolism rooted in a mix of local belief and imported Daoism. Before Feng Shui was brought to Guangdong, ‘[…] the indigenous people followed Wu culture, which was replete with superstitions such as fortune-telling and divination. The Wu culture combined with imported Feng Shui ideas to create a form of Feng Shui in Guangdong that has a particularly superstitious hue’ (AP1). It was within the peasantry that superstition thrived and became mixed with more ‘functional’ Feng Shui teachings. Later attempts in China to sort rationality from fortune-telling, and science from superstition, has sometimes presented auspicious dates, colours and numbers as features of the latter, potentially undermining the credibility of those aspects of Feng Shui that make sense to sceptics. Interviewee AP1 pointed to the ‘superstitious localization’ that Feng Shui must contend with, which is part of its ‘inheritance and development’ in rural China and which is frequently imported to cities through population movements and urbanisation. A number of themes stand out from this review of past attitudes: Feng Shui as social control —a source of authority; Feng Shui as confidence trick—winning economic advantage for a ruling gentry; and Feng Shui as science corrupted by superstition. These themes, and the perspectives found in literature and in our interviews, point to an attitude towards Feng Shui contoured by the more recent economic and political past.

3.2.2

Contemporary Use and Attitudes Towards Feng Shui

The twentieth century started with the end of the Qing dynasty, an acceleration of nationalism, economic reform and more wars against foreign invaders. These crises demanded a comprehensive response: modernisation of China’s industry and agriculture, its armed forces and its systems of governance. In embracing modernity, China also rejected those aspects of traditional culture thought to be a brake on its development. This was a period of categorization: the binary labelling of things considered

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good or bad—progress versus backwardness, the future versus the past and science versus superstition. Feng Shui had no part to play in China’s brave new world (Huang 2019). The founding of the PRC after the defeat of the nationalists further entrenched these binaries. The nationalists and communists shared a belief in deep economic and technological reform and only differed on the point of who should control the means of production. The Chinese Communist Party’s Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962) aimed to eradicate private farming and shift entirely to a system of agricultural collectivization. This five-year plan sought a huge increase in farm production through science, mechanisation and the supplanting of local decision-making with central control. The project was an unmitigated disaster, bringing famine on an unprecedented scale to rural China. Mao Zedong blamed counter-revolutionaries for undermining his plan and launched the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976) with the aim of purging capitalist and traditionalist elements from Chinese society. It was during this period that all forms of traditional thought were subdued. Feng Shui was listed amongst ‘traditional’ and therefore counter-revolutionary elements, and faced very significant suppression. But China under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, after 1978, was a very different place, turning its back on the violence and suppression of the previous decades and opening up again to the world. Alongside significant economic reform, the 1980s saw the beginning of a cultural revival rooted in China’s towns and villages but also discussed openly within universities (Arch). Feng Shui re-emerged from a period of hiding and has since regained much of its status as cultural referent. In this section, we examine contemporary uses and attitudes towards Feng Shui, moving towards our consideration of how the attitudes of key actors shape the built environment. Individuals and Communities A recent survey in eastern Guangdong found that amongst 200 people interviewed, 60 per cent ‘believed in Feng Shui’. Ninety per cent of them believed that Feng Shui is to some extent ‘scientific’ (Huang 2016, 71– 72). But it does not follow that belief in something equals understanding, or that Feng Shui is scientific in a normative sense: If you talk about Feng Shui with the Cantonese, many will claim that they have a certain understanding of Feng Shui. But most people, in fact, have not studied any literature [and acquire] only a piecemeal knowledge

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through word of mouth: their knowledge is largely on the superstitious side of Feng Shui. (AA1)

The idea that science affords acceptability, and that superstition is best avoided, is a rationalism that took deeper roots in the twentieth century— not only in China but in all modernising countries. But in China, this message was a particularly forceful one, shaping current attitudes towards Feng Shui. This has resulted in a separation of Feng Shui’s ‘superstitious side’ from its acceptable rationality. Ming Li—literally fame and profit —is a form of Chinese fortune-telling that originates in the Yi Jing : Ming Li has long been part of Feng Shui, although in academia it is rarely discussed due to its lack of scientific basis. In reality, however, every Feng Shui master is proficient in Ming Li theories. (FS3)

Functional Feng Shui—where there is an alignment of environmental logic with ancient geomancy—has become a subject of technical manuals and university courses, and is represented in domestic practice by Kan Zhai, the inspection and rearrangement of living spaces (FS2, FS3). But in Guangdong, Kan Zhai is less widespread than Ming Li, with Feng Shui masters more regularly being consulted on the choice of auspicious days and times for important family events or the name of a newborn (FS2, FS3). This is taken as evidence of a leaning towards ‘superstition’ in Guangdong, often in the hope that Feng Shui can support business success: All of my friends who do business believe in Feng Shui […] we are all in contact with two well-known Feng Shui masters who have different specialities. [At] the beginning of each year, I always ask the master to do a fortune-telling and to advise me on what I should avoid doing in the coming year. Whenever I move into a new office, or open a new business site, consulting the master is something that I must do. The masters have helped a lot [with my career]. (CG2)

Whilst Feng Shui might be viewed as a ‘psychological placebo’, the strength of community belief is evidenced in the view that the destruction of temples and other auspicious sites during the Maoist period was responsible for, amongst other things, declining community and clan cohesion, population loss, bad harvests, rising poverty and even local disasters such as fires. All of these were the result of bad Feng Shui, which

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many rural communities have sought to correct through the rebuilding of pagodas, arches and Daoist temples over the last two decades (URP, FS1). Similarly, the challenges facing some urban communities—including antisocial and criminal behaviour, high incidence of suicide and fire risk—are regularly attributed to ‘bad Feng Shui’. People faced with the prospect of moving into these areas will get their homes checked before arriving (FS1, FS3): I have visited different kinds of neighborhoods - from high-end villas to chaotic urban villages. Whether the people who consult me genuinely believe in Feng Shui or not, they just feel safer [having checked the Feng Shui and after making necessary adjustments] […] It is better to be safe than sorry. (FS1)

Individual and community attitudes towards Feng Shui are an important marker of cultural attachment. Arguably, however, ‘community Feng Shui’ is presented today as a lower form of a higher culture. This view has strengthened with the return of Feng Shui as a subject of university discussion. The CCP also continues to shape this discourse, finding the ‘scientific’ basis of Feng Shui marginally more acceptable than its rootedness in superstition and ‘backwardness’. How the CCP views Feng Shui will ostensibly define how it is seen, and used, by officials in local government—including by planning teams. Built Environment Professionals—Planning Officials The majority of administrative staff in every level of government are members of the Communist Party and therefore barred from engagement in ‘religious and superstitious’ activities (HCD, URP). But whilst there is no freedom of belief for party members, there has been growing interest in architectural Feng Shui during the early years of the twenty-first century. In 2004, an international conference housed in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing examined ‘Chinese Construction, Feng Shui Culture and Healthy Land Development’ (AP1; Youth Daily 2004). A year later, the Chinese Architectural and Cultural Centre (CACC)—a research institute directly under the control of central government—set up an expert committee on architectural Feng Shui. These two events ‘seemed to signal that the official attitude towards Feng Shui [had] changed from discouragement to acquiescence’ (AP1). Given this prompt, a number

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of universities in Guangdong sought permission to offer training courses that would lead to certification and accreditation of Feng Shui practitioners. The provincial government in Guangdong however, displayed little enthusiasm for these proposals, which therefore failed to get off the ground. In Beijing, a similar course was proposed by the CACC expert committee, which garnered the attention of national media, prompted widespread discussion, and was ultimately rejected by central government (Zhang and He 2012). The idea of a course in Beijing was dropped, as were the Guangdong proposals. But this episode raises an important point concerning the reinterpretation of Feng Shui through the lens of twenty-first-century rationalism and the belief, in some quarters, that its scientific core can be removed from the white noise of superstition. Architectural Feng Shui is seen to have purpose, not as a tool of value extraction, but as a cultural referent with actually existing environmental benefits. The failure to bring Feng Shui into the political mainstream in the early 2000s might now be seen as a missed opportunity, leaving local government to muddle through on issues of Feng Shui. It remains a point of contention for communities, which officials need to quietly but not publicly address, accepting some personal risk when reacting to Feng Shui concerns in an official capacity. The reality is that in the built environment, Feng Shui remains an ‘innate cultural habit’ that interfaces with public administration: Although Feng Shui has always been intertwined with religious and superstitious elements since its birth, for many Guangdong people, superstitions are based more on cultural habit than conscious belief […] we’ve got to respect that cultural habit in management activities. (HCD)

Again, the issue of acceptability raises its head: it is more acceptable to respond to cultural habit than conscious belief rooted in the irrational. The pace of urban development in parts of Guangdong has meant that entire communities have sometimes been relocated, along with their Feng Shui landmarks such as memorial arches, ancestral halls and temples. These are taken apart, relocated and rebuilt using the original bricks and beams (HCD, RE2). Local government funding rules prohibit expenditure on the restoration or preservation of Feng Shui, but officials regularly meet these costs in order to facilitate urban renewal and avoid local conflicts (AP1). Funding can be used for improving public spaces, but the definition of what constitutes a public space is often stretched to cover

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Feng Shui landmarks: the community gets its space, but actually that space is sited and exists to change the Feng Shui. Respondent URP cited the example of ‘community D’ in Huidong County. As part of a large-scale relocation and improvement programme, funding was made available to build a small square and pavilion. But community D wanted to rebuild their demolished Wen Chang (God of Literature) Temple, in which they had previously held community gatherings and celebrations. Such a temple was not a prescribed religious site and nor was it a recognised cultural relic: rather it was something new, sited to address deficiencies in the community’s new location. After several rounds of negotiation, with the community adamant that its fortunes would be irreparably damaged without the restoration of its Feng Shui, local government acquiesced and rebuilt the temple. Built Environment Professionals—Architects and Masters For ‘professionals’, the connection between Feng Shui and traditional architecture is strong, though rooted in academia rather than acquired through daily practice. Once fortune-telling is removed, Feng Shui becomes a mix of technical knowledge and cultural awareness, expressed in built heritage, and important when working on heritage sites or projects that seek to deliver more than a pastiche of traditional architecture. Over the last 20 years, researchers have been at pains to emphasise the scientific basis of Feng Shui and its applicability to architecture and planning, as a means of decoding heritage buildings and providing a guide for new construction (Cheng 2011; Liu 2018; He 2020). The problem, however, is that architectural Feng Shui is a ‘black box’, with all its parts and processes not fully understood. Feng Shui cannot [be understood] only from a technical point of view. It is a close combination of cultural thoughts and [the development of] cities […] the superstitious elements of Feng Shui do not conflict with its role as an important cultural heritage in Chinese ancient architecture and urban planning […] but we still do not know enough about it at present. (AP1)

The point is that a complete rather than a fragmented understanding of Feng Shui—including ‘superstitious elements’—is key to architectural Feng Shui: ‘[…] if we don’t know the whole picture […] we can’t fully understand the ancient Chinese architectural culture’ (AA1). Moreover,

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any blocks on education and the study of Feng Shui limit the ability of urban professionals to tackle the challenges of their built environment (Arch). The view of these professionals was very much introspective: what is lost without the complete study of Feng Shui? The answer is the depth of cultural understanding needed to decipher Chinese architecture. Therefore the study of Feng Shui was viewed as critically important and the ‘optional courses’ available at universities offered little more than a glimpse of how traditional geomancy is rendered and interpreted in buildings (AA1). An inability to practice Feng Shui risked its authenticity: If a planner or a designer knows Feng Shui, it becomes an innate practice to use the principles in planning or designing [but] if clients have special demands, the Feng Shui elements will be accentuated […] However, not so many [professionals] truly understand Feng Shui. (Arch)

Architectural design was generally thought to lack the deep cultural awareness and skills needed to deliver that authenticity, although principles were more closely adhered to in landscape and interior design (AA1, Arch and FS1). Moreover, the challenges of delivering Feng Shui through architectural design relative to the ease with which interior design could respond to a codified geomancy, able to correct poor building Feng Shui, meant that professional practice was increasingly focused on interiors— leading to a branded interiorisation of Feng Shui and also a professional internalisation. Whilst the placement of objects, to affect the flow of qi, has always been a feature of domestic Feng Shui, it has arguably become more emphasised in recent times—with an industry emerging to support Feng Shui practice (see also Yan 2019). More generally, that practice exists within a mix of ‘good and bad’ professional circles (FS1). The first of these are the academic practitioners who belong to a Feng Shui or Yi Jing research institute. They possess a high level of education, broad theoretical and practical knowledge and propagate Feng Shui teachings through professional consultations, delivering training courses (where permitted) and publishing papers and books (FS1). The second type are the ‘orthodox’ or ‘real’ Feng Shui masters, in the eyes of the general public. They consider their Feng Shui knowledge as more ‘authentic’ having acquired it through apprenticeship or through family—from their own master—and are usually aligned with a specific school. These are often the best-paid practitioners, the practising masters who work for the wealthy and powerful in society (in the past, they might have been in the

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pay of the gentry) but also extend their business to ordinary people able to pay their fees (FS2, FS3). The third type are the ‘worldly’ practitioners, whose knowledge is more limited and who are really in business to make money, usually from large numbers of more ordinary clients. These practitioners are active in specific neighbourhoods; they get business through word of mouth; and they face criticism from the orthodox ‘masters’ for undermining genuine geomancy (FS4) and for stealing clients. It is of course mainly the first group that becomes involved in advising larger projects: many of the academic practitioners blend an architectural education with a knowledge of functional Feng Shui, affording them a level of expertise in traditional architecture. But again, this is not the primary focus of current Feng Shui practice, which remains on interiors, with architects focused on the design of those interiors and orthodox masters on corrective interventions. From the point of view of clients, the advice they pay for buys ‘confidence’ (FS1). But both the integration of design with Feng Shui and the corrective interventions arising from Kan Zhai are considered by academics and leading practitioners as having a basis in science (FS2). There was constant return, in interviews, to the claim of scientific rationality, which competed, in practice, with the superstitious demands of clients—most clearly illustrated in the case of real estate developers. Real Estate Developers Real estate developers in Guangdong are the primary source of commercial demand for Feng Shui consultation (RE1, RE2, FS2 and FS3). Their engagement with Feng Shui mixes superstition—auspicious objects buried at groundbreaking ceremonies and red ribbons attached to the arms of cranes—with actual design features that are then showcased to potential clients: homebuyers or business tenants. The attention given to Feng Shui is clear: I have not come across any real estate developer in Guangdong who doesn’t take Feng Shui seriously […] nine out of ten [development] projects will be inspected by Feng Shui masters. (RE2)

It was further suggested that companies operating out of northern cities such as Shanghai and Beijing display far less concern for Feng Shui, but those based in Guangdong carry their concerns for Feng Shui with them

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wherever they develop across China (RE1). The company of interviewee RE1, for example, had development projects in first-tier cities in sixteen different provinces. It engaged a Feng Shui consultant some years ago and that consultant now advises on all of the company’s projects. Once a site is identified, the in-house planners and designers work with the consultant on the detailing of the project and will modify overall orientation, the placement of entrances and windows and the design of the landscape according to the advice of the consultant: Many companies have similar collaborations with Feng Shui masters […] For the advice they provide, a company is often willing to pay as much as several millions for a yearly contract, or several hundreds of thousands for a single project. (RE1)

Good Feng Shui, which can be marketed to clients, is considered a development cost. Companies will do as much as they can within set financial tolerances. This means that not all advice is taken on board. Companies are rather looking for a balance between generally getting the Feng Shui ‘right’ and ensuring that it will be right enough to make money without jeopardising the viability of a project or falling foul of planning (RE1, RE2 and FS1): Money is still the [guiding] priority for making any decision […] the general rule is that there can be no major conflict with planning regulation and [all costs must be] within financial budget. Furthermore, advice needs to be considered reasonable by the executive director. (FS1)

How developers then ‘mobilize’ the ‘good Feng Shui’ they have purchased speaks to its commercial purpose. Until 2016, masters were often invited to produce ‘Feng Shui marketing brochures’ as supplements to general materials. They also regularly instructed sales teams on the explanation of Feng Shui features to prospective customers (FS2, FS3). But new regulations introduced in February that year barred references to ‘Feng Shui and divination’ in marketing brochures.1 A number of high-profile cases, involving claims and counterclaims by different masters seemed to be affecting the perception and occupancy of buildings. And whilst the value added by Feng Shui cannot be exactly priced, there seems 1 http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2016/content_5038027.htm (in Chinese).

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to be a general expectation amongst clients that all buildings achieve a Guangdong benchmark, which is generic for building projects in the province. The extent to which they are competing for clients on ‘good’ or ‘better’ Feng Shui was not apparent from the interviews. There were some examples of parlour tricks designed to draw investors to certain types of building. For example, in department stores: The regular principle of placing escalators is convenience. Basically, the escalators on several floors are located in the same vertical position on each floor with the same orientation – neat and beautiful [but] when you walk [into some department stores] in Guangdong, you’ll find a lot of escalators arranged in what they called a ‘Feng Shui scissor-array’: escalators in different positions on each floor with different orientations, the kind of design that just wants you to take a detour. (Arch)

But such labyrinthine designs owe little to genuine Feng Shui and have rather become par for the course around the world, ensuring the even distribution of rental value throughout department stores rather than it being vertically stacked next to escalators. The apparent general acceptance of Feng Shui across Guangdong produces a broad leaning towards compliance, but the degree to which development companies factor in Feng Shui, relative to other commercial and regulatory considerations, suggests greater concern for not jeopardising saleability rather than going out of their way to increase value.

3.3

The Spaces of Feng Shui in Guangdong

The previous sections have tracked through different actors’ attitudes towards Feng Shui in Guangdong: it is those attitudes that shape space at different scales. We have suggested that three factors define relationships with Feng Shui. The first is pejoratively described as superstition, although superstitious beliefs are often part of a cultural memory, rooted in past events and important places and expressed as acquired custom. The second is scientific rationality, which became a more prominent interpretive frame for Feng Shui from the late nineteenth century onwards. In the twentieth century, that rationality became an authoritarian decree, suppressing traditional custom and eventually, during the reform years, leading to an acceptable architectural Feng Shui. The third factor is commerce and profit. Beyond the customary belief that Feng Shui delivers

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good future, this factor inclines developers to promote the good Feng Shui of their buildings to prospective clients, not necessarily for competitive advantage, but because respect of Feng Shui is a critical cultural referent. This book is about transition: from Feng Shui’s animistic root, where it meets the needs of everyday life, to modern states where commercial demand rises to the fore, and Feng Shui is instrumentalised in pursuit of profit. In the consideration of the spaces of Feng Shui that follows, we draw out evidence of ‘abstraction’, centred on the development of land and on client–producer relationships 3.3.1

The Domestic Space of Feng Shui

Feng Shui remains an important cultural referent when residential spaces are built. In Guangzhou, for example, local studio O-office Architects has recently reinterpreted the traditional courtyard house ‘in concrete and steel’ following ‘the spatial principles of Feng Shui’ (Griffiths 2018, para. 3) and in Shenzhen many ‘new residential buildings will have skylights, ponds stocked with fish, rockeries and auspiciously aligned entrance gates to allow the energy to really get to work’ (Coonan 2008, para. 40). Feng Shui in the home seems not to have changed appreciably since ancient times and remains tied to individuals’ pursuit of good fortune, or more specifically peace, health and wealth. Much of what happens in the home, and the adjustments that are made for the purpose of Feng Shui, have a clear underlying logic. Orientation is important for maximising comfortable exposure to the sun and minimising the effect of cold winds. Siting away from busy roads will reduce the risk of being disturbed by noise, affected by pollution or injured in a traffic accident. And the choice of colours in the home, and decorations that are comforting, will contribute to psychological well-being (FS4). Guangdong’s semi-tropical marine climate, with its regular monsoon season, means that its residents need to contend with hot and humid weather. In the past, without the benefit of modern medicine, good Feng Shui played a key role in ensuring a healthy living environment—and belief in its health logic remains strong today. One of the community representatives shared her experience on this front: (CG1). She moved to a new job and was provided with accommodation by her employer. Shortly after moving in, she began suffering from frequent dizziness and stomach upset. Her doctor could identify no obvious cause and so her father invited a Feng Shui master to inspect her

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new home. The doors of the kitchen and bathroom were directly opposite each other, ‘resulting in conflicting qi’. The master advised that she place a protective curtain at the entrance of the bathroom and keep the extractor fan switched on in the kitchen as much as possible. The position of the cooking bench was also changed. These relatively modest adjustments were said to have had a profound health benefit. A few years later, the same respondent bought a flat of her own and, after consulting the same master, adjusted its layout before moving in. These sorts of changes to domestic space can easily be rationalised, in terms of good ventilation and avoiding exposure to draughts. But other changes, designed to deliver wealth, arguably lean towards the superstitious and the types of belief that are rescaled in commercial projects. A villa in Shenzhen, for example, recently had its ‘inauspiciously placed swimming pool […] filled in and moved around the back’ on the advice of a Feng Shui consultant to correct its ‘bad Feng Shui’ (Coonan 2008, paras. 2–6). Interviewer FS1 shared his experience of a recent consultation. His client was a businessman who had built a three-storey house for himself and his family. He claimed that since moving into the house, his business had struggled and his financial situation deteriorated. After inspection, FS1 concluded that the front door of the house was too large, allowing qi to escape. His client agreed to instal a smaller door and place water in his entrance hall to ‘boost wealth’. But FS1 also noted that the doors of two neighbouring houses were directly facing his client’s door—creating a disastrous confluence of energy. The neighbours were reluctant to make any changes to their properties. But a year later, they came back to FS1 with stories of involvement in traffic accidents and dogbiting incidences and agreed to move the doors according to FS1’s advice. The doors were eventually staggered so as to avoid facing each other (see Fig. 3.4). Entrance gates and doors are a critical consideration in Feng Shui: they are ‘Qi Kou’—ports of vital energy—to which special attention should be paid, in terms of their orientation, colour, material and so forth. In ‘rational’ thought, Qi becomes air: its flow potentially disrupted by a Kou that is too narrow and restrictive, or too strong if the Kou is too large (relative to internal spaces) (Li 2013; Wu et al. 2018). Ventilation links to health, health to well-being and well-being to confidence. Hence, in some instances, good Feng Shui is codified in building regulations, or rather those building regulations outwardly appear aligned with Feng Shui. The

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Fig. 3.4 Illustrative drawing of doors (Credit Author)

substitution of air with vital energy seems to give Feng Shui a superstitious hue, but the other way round suggests something more scientific. This is perhaps the essence of Feng Shui in the home: it mixes custom and tradition with environmental logic, and this has always been the case. Therefore the idea of a transition from superstition to science should be questioned: the two coexist, but the latter became the more acceptable lens through which to view Feng Shui in the twentieth century. In the meantime, the fortunes of FS1’s client were reported to have improved. His business got back on track, as did his finances. 3.3.2

The Commercial Space of Feng Shui

The engagement of commercial development with Feng Shui has to be understood in the context of China’s changing development model. Land is either in state or collective ownership and the disposal (and leasing) of land to private companies, with state contracts, is the principal means of municipal finance (Wu 2015). Therefore ‘commercial development’ of land in China is a model that has been returned to only in the last 40 years. Prior to that, the state directly controlled all land development and suppressed any ‘superstition’ or custom that might affect development practice. All of that has changed in recent years, meaning that Feng

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Shui is an expected feature of development and potentially a part of the way value is extracted, by businesses, via land development. Guangdong is a special case in terms of engagement with Feng Shui: It is only in the southeast coastal area in China that Feng Shui is advertised openly and positively by real estate developers. It is not a common thing in other parts of China […]. Here in Guangdong, Feng Shui has a social demand. (FS1)

That social demand is the vital context for development in Guangdong. In the past, it was Feng Shui masters who oversaw the planning and development of villages, towns and cities. Today, that role is taken by built environment professionals who, as we have noted in previous sections, have adopted a functional and rational perspective on Feng Shui. Masters retain their role in domestic spaces, and will be called upon to advise where someone should build or buy a house or, more usually in urban areas, how an apartment’s Feng Shui might be improved. But in the commercial world, the considerations of clients (i.e. property developers) shift: from personal well-being to ensuring that social demand for Feng Shui is met through development that meets expectation. It was noted earlier that companies form collaborations with respected masters, some of whom are retained as consultants through successive projects. Their role is to achieve a balance between good Feng Shui (that is marketable) and development costs, protecting gross development value from the suspicion of bad Feng Shui. But the interviewed developers diverged in the objective of having masters onboard in projects. RE2 contended that the role of the master is to confer confidence (to potential customers), which can mean a focus on relatively minor concessions to Feng Shui, protecting projects from bad press and weak sales. RE1, on the other hand, saw Feng Shui as having a positive impact on development value, even if the involvement of a master during the promotion of a project could be seen as a ‘gimmick’. Getting the fundamentals right was still important, and valuable, in the Guangdong market. The perspective of the developers on Feng Shui perhaps requires some unpacking: both acknowledged the social demand for respecting Feng Shui, but neither were strong adherents. It was seen as something that had to be done to mitigate risk rather than a positive action for increasing value. CG2, on the other hand, offered a customer’s perspective and claimed that belief

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in the importance of Feng Shui contoured the property market, even in the presence of more cynical voices. The reality is that a Feng Shui industry, grounded in commercial property, has taken root in Guangdong since the reforms of the 1980s. This industry has brought selected masters into collaborations with urban designers, architects and construction companies. It stretches from site planning all the way to decisions over the fixtures and fittings within buildings. Those masters have contracts with companies, provide a remunerated consultation service and are bound by legal obligations. However, the issue of certification and accreditation remains a challenge: because there is no regulation or standard of ethics, relationships between masters and commercial clients can quickly sour, and this itself evidences commercial sensitivities around Feng Shui and its value within land development. Prominent masters often comment on the attributes of new developments on social media, thereby establishing their credentials and drawing in clients. FS1 runs a Feng Shui practice that regularly published reviews of new projects on a WeChat public account, analysing aspects of their Feng Shui. The account had two million subscribers. In July 2019, FS1 reviewed a mixed commercial centre in Guangzhou, noting significant faults in the design of an internal shopping mall and adjoining office buildings. He suggested that those faults would lead to any businesses renting space in the centre losing money. Within days, he received a letter from the developer’s lawyers requesting a retraction of his analysis. The CEO of the company had previously lauded the good Feng Shui of the centre on his own social media account and the legal action that he instigated evidenced the threat to profits that the claim of bad Feng Shui represented. FS1 countered that his analysis was solid and that despite the centre’s bad Feng Shui, he intended no detriment to the company: he was simply bringing the bad Feng Shui that the company had delivered to public record. Not surprisingly, the developer pursued its claim and the case was pending at the time of interview. Interestingly, the master’s WeChat public account was shut down, ostensibly for reasons of ‘spreading superstition’, but possibly also because any threat to ground rents is a threat to public revenue in Guangzhou. Public authorities know that Feng Shui is taken seriously and do likewise, working with business to protect the value of development. But for every critique of bad Feng Shui, there are dozens of glossy reviews that celebrate commercial projects ostensibly respecting

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its popular elements. Feng Shui is referenced, for example in the advertising and reviewing of many luxury hotels across the province The Four Season Hotel Guangzhou, located in the city’s CBD, for example, is said to be ‘perfectly situated for positive Feng Shui’2 ; and in the Doubletree by Hilton, in the historic centre of the city, people ‘can find Feng Shui elements everywhere’.3 These reviews tend to be superficial, reporting on hearsay and repeating the claims of the developers. Some reporting tries to distance itself from ‘superstition’ and explain why otherwise rational companies might sully themselves in local custom. For example, China Merchants Bank (CMB), with its headquarters in Shenzhen, courted controversy by reportedly ‘inviting a Feng Shui master […] to its end of the year ceremony’ (Yuwei 2019, para. 1). This prompted the observation that banking should be about ‘science’ and not ‘superstition’ (ibid., para. 8) and hence the suspicion that the ‘bank may not believe in Feng Shui’ but was rather assuaging the concerns of its Guangdong-based customers, thereby responding to social demand. 3.3.3

The Public Space of Feng Shui

Returning to the example of the mixed commercial centre, the private– public spaces of shopping malls are of concern to regulators as they are rent and therefore revenue generating. But the broader public realm is also a focus of regulatory concern because of the same social demand for Feng Shui. It was noted above that public authorities will acquiesce to local demands over temples, and similar, to avoid confrontations with community groups: to forestall, perhaps, the spectacle of protest. But public spaces today are not shaped in the same way as they were in dynastic China: Feng Shui in the past was an expression of legitimacy; entire urban layouts were planned to protect the power of rulers and enhance confidence in their rule. Today, engagements with Feng Shui are often contradictory and seldom open. The official line is that geomancy plays no part in the planning and design of public realm, except in the case of cemeteries (HCD, URP). The design of Fuyueling cemetery in Maoming, southwest Guangdong, for example, followed the advice of 2 See: https://www.luxurytravelmagazine.com/news-articles/a-view-from-the-top-fourseasons-set-to-open-in-guangzhou-china-this-summer. 3 See: https://www.businesstraveller.com/news/2014/08/25/first-look-doubletree-byhilton-guangzhou/.

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a Feng Shui master. Its orientation and layout, including the placement of water and artificial hills (with a height sufficient to represent mountains) gave it geomantic conformity. The planting of pines, cypresses and willows—representing longevity, protection and vitality for descendants— had both a symbolic and practical purpose, with these species actively deterring insects (FS1). Concern for burial spaces strips Feng Shui back to its core, to ancestor worship, and the avoidance of public outrage at their siting, design and proximity to other buildings simply makes sense. Feng Shui’s influence in public spaces also endures through the preservation of historical buildings, such as the Guangya Imperial academy (Fan and Li 2012), and the ancestral hall of the Chen family (Shao 2018), both in Guangzhou. In the same vein, Feng Shui forests are often ‘designated as protected areas by the state’ (Coggins et al. 2012, 58), elevating the artefacts of Feng Shui to the status of protected heritage. This happened in the case of Yanzao village forest, near Shenzhen (ibid.). A line is then drawn beneath planning’s engagement with traditionalism. That line divides the rule of the emperors from the Chinese Communist Party: the former sought legitimacy from the use of Feng Shui; the latter seeks legitimacy from progress and the rejection of backwardness (HCD). The CCP is unlikely to wield Feng Shui like a dynastic ruler, attributing its successes to the heavens. But on the ground, this line is not so clear. Local authorities everywhere are cautious about being seen to endorse ‘superstition’ or treat Feng Shui as a material consideration in planning decisions, but pragmatism in the face of social demand is a powerful driver, as in the Huidong County example cited above. The same is demonstrated by the rebranding of ancestors’ or lineage halls as ‘senior citizen centres’: this is a result of villagers’ ‘negotiations with the local government to keep their lineage hall without labelling it as a place for ‘feudal’ or ‘superstitious’ activity’ (Tam 2011, 38). But there are also more direct contradictions. Interviewees observed that numerous public buildings and spaces, including the Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center (HEMC), conform to numerous Feng Shui principles (Arch, FS1 and FS4). The Center—essentially a cluster of university campuses built across an area of 18 square kilometres on Xiaoguwei Island—is oriented along an axis representing scholarship and the clusters (of universities) were said to resemble the shape of a turtle shell (FS4). More generally, it appears consistent with Feng Shui tradition (Bosselmann 2018). Xiaoguwei Island is located in Panyu District and

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the first phase of development—of just over 3.5 million square metres of campus extension space for 10 universities—was completed in 2004. Likewise, a number of government buildings opened from the 1990s onwards have included obvious Feng Shui features, including correctly positioned water and symmetrical hat-shaped roofs (Arch). Non-symmetrical roofs are avoided as these tend to divert beneficial qi away from the building and its occupants. Cartier (2005, 64) goes as far as to suggest that the plan for the centre of Shenzhen, approved at the end of the 1990s, had ‘perfect Feng Shui’, which had been sought directly by Shenzhen’s People’s Congress. The Congress had applied pressure on the municipal authority to assign it space in a new city hall after a series of accidents in its old building had led to injuries and fatalities. Good Feng Shui in a new building, set in a newly planned urban setting, was expected to prevent recurrence of such misfortune. However, official documents refer only to the desire for ‘more beautiful surroundings’ as a reason for the revision of its plan (ibid., 64). Official state endorsement is difficult to track down and therefore the extent to which Feng Shui was commissioned, in any of the previous examples, as opposed to designers merely conforming to social norms, remains unclear. Were architects simply delivering what they knew, and what they knew would be acceptable, conforming perhaps to unwritten rules? These unwritten rules guide official engagements with Feng Shui in China. Nothing is codified and public officials, despite the restrictions of political affiliation, form part of the social demand for Feng Shui. That social demand is a big part of the decision-making environment in which public officials operate. On the other hand, everything built in China is viewed and assessed through the lens of Feng Shui. A water feature in one position is evidence of intent; placed elsewhere, it reveals error. Likewise, built forms can illustrate belief in the power of the heavens, or can be accidents of topography. The ‘turtle shell’ of HEMC, for instance, seems to owe its form as much to the shape of Xiaoguwei Island as anything else. But because Feng Shui is such a powerful cultural referent, it contours perceptions of the built environment, real or imagined.

3.4

Feng Shui’s Transition in Guangdong

Belief in, and expectations of, Feng Shui in Guangdong are a result of a tangled, complex history. Today’s mix of superstition and functional geomancy is rooted in indigenous cultures that predate the arrival of the

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Han in this part of southern China and also in the waves of movement, of people and ideas, that swept over the province for 3000 years. As Guangdong advanced to become China’s economic heartland, that superstition sought commercial and economic success. And as the province embraced reform, superstition was supplanted, to some degree, by scientific rationality. Over the last 70 years, since China’s turn to communism, Feng Shui has found itself rocked by different forces. The Cultural Revolution equated traditional thought with the imperial past, therefore viewing it as counter-revolutionary. More prosaically, it was seen as locking rural China into a backward mindset, limiting its capacity to embrace new ideas. Those views have changed, or at least softened, more recently: the social demand for Feng Shui, which survived and even thrived despite the turmoil of the twentieth century, is the cue for contemporary engagements. These include the use of Feng Shui in commercial property development. The Guangdong case illustrates important transitions both in thinking about Feng Shui and in its function. Clearly, past reform and more recent political change have resulted in an attempt to extract the scientific basis of geomancy from its cosmology, custom and superstition. Plans to accredit Feng Shui courses in Guangdong universities were invariably focused on connecting the science and pseudoscience of Feng Shui to traditional architecture: universities were not planning to offer degrees in fortunetelling. Feng Shui has transitioned towards acceptability by shedding or separating some of its more mystical attributes, though these remain in wider circulation and are important for a great many people. In terms of function, the view that Feng Shui has been in some way instrumentalised today for commercial gain must contend with the view that Feng Shui has been instrumentalised for political gain for thousands of years. Interviewees frequently referred to the ‘confidence’ that good Feng Shui bestows on its followers. That confidence was a source of power and stability for emperors, officials and the gentry, largely (but not entirely) rooted in Daoist environmental divination and belief in the harmony that the right spatial order can deliver. Although the emperors are gone, Feng Shui is still instrumentalised—but for market rather than political power. In that sense, it provides solutions for ‘old and new human demands’ (Madeddu and Zhang 2017, 715). Domestic engagements with Feng Shui have changed little over the years but evidence the strength of social demand across Guangdong. Significant sums of money are spent on Kan Zhai; and Feng Shui

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masters are prominent figures, even celebrities, on social media. It is upon this foundation that commercial engagements with Feng Shui are built: Guangdong’s population wants to live and work with good Feng Shui and therefore registers strong demand for office and shopping space that complies with its principles. Masters who draw attention to bad Feng Shui end up in court for the crime of ‘spreading superstition’: but the real damage they do is to commercial rents and public revenues tied to those rents. The guilty verdicts and significant fines speak to the very real fear of negative economic impact from bad Feng Shui and the value attached, by society at large, to good Feng Shui. But whilst disagreements between masters and developers signal sensitivities in the private sector, the role played by Feng Shui in the public realm is less clear. On the one hand, it is contrary to the ethics and rules of public office to plan or fund concessions to Feng Shui. Those officials who admit their inclinations may wind up on the wrong end of legal action. The officials in our study were happy to speak to general issues, including the social demand for Feng Shui and the integration of its principles into commercial projects. But they rejected the idea that the local state might play a guiding role in delivering good Feng Shui. Whether public projects seek compliance and harmony is left for masters to judge. In the final chapter, we turn to the key questions of this book, drawing on insights from the Guangdong and Hong Kong case studies. These questions bring the idea of ‘authenticity’ into a broader discussion of absolute and abstract spaces, introduced in Chapter 1. A framing idea is that authenticity—close alignment between culture and the space of that culture—is a feature of absolute spaces, losing traction where spaces are put to abstract purpose. The Guangdong case questions the rigidity of that idea: what we observe here is the overlay of absolute spaces of representation with abstract spaces of power and manipulation. Feng Shui has always connected rulers with the ruled. Arguably the degree of abstraction increases where Feng Shui is cynically manipulated by developers with little belief in it, in order to capture development value. This idea is examined more closely in the Hong Kong case. But it is very difficult to make such judgments of the political and economic producer–client relationship: to what extent were emperors authentic adherents; and then again, is it not safer to view society at large as adherent, but seeking different outcomes from Feng Shui? One interesting observation from the Guangdong case is the reliance of municipal authorities on land rents and the way, therefore, the idea of good Feng Shui is protected by the Chinese

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courts, or at least prevented from becoming a source of uncertainty in the property market. Economic and political interest come together, again suggesting an overlay of the authentic with the cynical, where it exists.

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CHAPTER 4

Feng Shui in the Chinese Territories: Hong Kong

Abstract The second of two case study chapters shifts attention to Hong Kong: a city shielded from broader Chinese economic and political reform for much of its recent history, and still afforded special status today (although that status is now being significantly curtailed). Drawing again on interviews with local informants, the chapter explores past and current relationships with Feng Shui before turning to the spaces of Feng Shui in contemporary Hong Kong. Whilst there is much similarity with Guangdong, the presence of global capital and actors in the city appears to accentuate Feng Shui’s commercial purpose: as a nod to tradition that, on balance, is more concerned with value extraction. But as in Guangdong, that view contends with the complexities of Feng Shui’s more abstract purpose, spanning symbolism and control. There is risk in seeing authenticity as absolute rather than as something adaptive and dynamic. Keywords Hong Kong · Case study · Interviews · Uses and attitudes · Spaces

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) covers an area of 1,104 square kilometres: it is generally hilly to mountainous with steep slopes. The SAR protrudes from the mainland and is surrounded on all

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Madeddu and X. Zhang, Feng Shui and the City, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0847-6_4

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sides by the South China Sea. It has a ‘composite urban form, characterized by a main urban core and multiple decentralized development nodes with very high concentrations of people, mostly accommodated in super high rises’ (Chiu 2016, 160). It comprises four distinct areas: Hong Kong Island, which is home to the core of the city and its financial district; Kowloon, the touristic heart; the New Territories, bordering mainland China and home to over half of all Hong Kong residents; and more than 200 outlying islands to the south west (see Fig. 2.5). This ‘small city with a big reputation’ (Chiu and Lui 2009, 1) has long been considered a bridge between the west and the east, first as a free port where British companies managed their opium cargos before smuggling them into China, and later as a focus for free trade and a financial centre of international importance. A British colony since 1842, Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997; however, an agreement between London and Beijing signed in the 1980s stipulated that for another 50 years after the end of the lease the city would function under a ‘one country, two systems’ constitutional principle, preserving its status quo and becoming a Special Administrative Region within the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as detailed in Chapter 2. Because of its colonial history and its continuous links with the Western world, Hong Kong has embarked on a path of development that differs from that of cities in mainland China, experiencing a level of freedom, both political and economic, and maintaining an outward-looking ethos. However, recent events—including the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and more recent protests in 2019 and 2020—speak to the city’s continuing role as a place in-between two cultures and two socio-economic and political systems; a role that is reflected in the attitude of its people towards modernity and tradition. This second case study chapter explores the relationship between Feng Shui and the built environment in Hong Kong. It is divided into four parts. The chapter details, firstly, the Hong Kong population’s historic attachment to Feng Shui before turning, in the second and third parts, to the influences exerted by different actors and groups and then the scales across which that influence is felt. These examinations of influence draw on interviews with a number of Hong Kong-based built environment professionals. Their reflections cast a light on the beliefs, attitudes and values that have produced distinct urban outcomes in the past and how they are continuing to do so today. A critical issue emerging from this examination of Feng Shui’s past and present is the extent to which

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‘authenticity’ has been eroded and a commercial development sector, which pays lip-service to local identity and belief, has substituted deeply held values with an ‘ersatz’ form of Feng Shui designed merely to placate local communities and increase profit margins. The questions of authenticity—what it is and whether it is eliminated by regulatory practice and commercial forms of development—is the final destination of this chapter, although no definitive answer is provided. Rather, the fourth and final part of this chapter sets up broader questions that are returned to in Chapter 5.

4.1 The Early Development of Hong Kong and the Influence of Feng Shui on Its Historic Built Environment Hong Kong is often said to have ‘good’ Feng Shui with regard to its siting and orientation, with some even claiming that the city has ‘the best feng shui on earth’ (Keegan 2018, para. 20). Facing the ‘nurturing sun to the south’ and being ‘framed by mountain ranges’ (Paton 2015, 494), the city’s location conforms to traditional Form School theories; its position between mountains and water is believed to allow qi to flow freely before being collected at the harbour (Keegan 2018). Feng Shui considerations had no bearing on the British decision to build a trade settlement on Hong Kong Island in the seventeenth century; rather, the northern coast of the island was selected because of its advantageous location for trade and defence (Ho 2018). However, past influences of Feng Shui on Hong Kong’s landscape and built environment are evident in the New Territories; here, a native population of around 80,000 people were living in ‘lineage’ villages1 when the British leased this part of Hong Kong in 1898 (Hayes 2006) meaning that it is here that ‘traditional ideas and practices have survived their strongest’ (Wesley-Smith 1994, 214), shaping ‘much of the human landscape’ (Marafa 2003, 313).

1 The lineage is a ‘dominant form of social organisation amongst land-dwellers in south-

eastern China’; it is a ‘corporate group celebrating ritual unity and based on demonstrated descent from a common ancestor’ (Wesley-Smith 1994, 217). However, in the New Territories, the rights of settlement in a village were linked not only to membership of a lineage but could also be acquired by contract (ibid.). For a discussion on lineage in Hong Kong villages, see also Ip (1995).

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Fig. 4.1 Lai Chi Wo village (Credit Graham Roach)

Traditional villages, first founded by Cantonese speaking farmers (Punti) and, later on, by the Hakka ‘guest’ people,2 can still be found in the New Territories (see Fig. 4.1). Regular settlements were established here from the Song Dynasty3 (960–1279 AD) (Hayes 1977), when unrest in the mainland drove north–south migrations (Ip 1995). But whilst the Hong Kong gazetteer lists 600 ‘traditional villages’, Ali and Hill (2005, 29) point out that many of these have had their layout greatly altered by rebuilding and those that survive today are very unlike those existing 400 years ago. Nonetheless, they reveal Feng Shui influences in

2 People from the northeastern Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces were offered incentive by the Qing Government to migrate to this area in the seventeenth century in order to ‘bring prosperity to the desolate district’ after much of the original population did not return after the forced Coastal Evacuation; Hakka—a Han ethnic group ‘are distinguished from the early comers, Punti, by territorial origin and the dialect they speak’ (Ip 1995, 4). Another big incursion of Hakka happened between 1840 and 1860 from Guangdong and, by the time the British leased the New Territories, in 1898, ‘Hakka would account for almost half of the land population’ (Hayes 2006, 6). 3 From the Song Dynasty, together with Punti and Hakka, who dwelled on the land, another two Chinese-speaking ethnic groups replaced the aboriginal inhabitants of Hong Kong—Tanka and Hoklo, who lived in boats on the water (Wesley-Smith 1994).

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their siting, which generally conforms to the Form School (Mak and So 2015), with hills surrounding the villages on three sides and water bodies to the fore (Ip 1995). Feng Shui forests or woodlands are also ‘an integral part of most native settlements’ (Marafa 2003, 313), whilst a southerly orientation—albeit not a geomantically correct one, measured through Feng Shui compasses—is common only for villages built on the flat lowlands. Those built on steep slopes have a variety of orientations, including to the unfavourable north, and often ‘divert the flow of bad luck from that direction by constructing a free-standing wall or other barrier in front of the village gateway’ (Ali and Hill 2005, 34). These ‘remedial Feng Shui walls’ were ‘common in most rural settlements’ in Hong Kong (Ip 1995, 103) and can still be found in several villages in the eastern part of the New Territories (Ali and Hill 2005). Other ‘feng shui structures’— that appeared not to have practical use—were introduced to ‘alter the inherent defects of the site’ when ‘people fail[ed] to find a piece of good feng shui land’ (Ip 1995, 102). There are also documented examples of entire communities moving to a different village when the bad Feng Shui could not be corrected—as in the case in Nam Pin Wai (Ip 1995)—and even of the site of an entire village being lowered on the advice of a Feng Shui master (Hayes 1991). In the past […] disputes over the fung-shui [sic] of settlements or ancestral graves were not uncommon, because everyone believed that sitings were directly linked with prosperity or adversity. Superior geomantic skills were in demand, since they could be used to injure the fung-shui of another village, lineage, branch lineage or family, or even to drive out earlier settlers. (Hayes 2006, 7)

Anderson and Anderson (1973) draw attention to the practical essence of Feng Shui, highlighting that […] the net results of the system was to prevent unnecessary weather damage, misuse of land and land exhaustion [as] a well-sited village is protected from the elements. Typhoons, heat waves, storms and the like are broken in their force by the hills, spurs and groves. Erosion is limited by trees and terraces. (p. 45)

Influences of Feng Shui can be read in the internal layouts of traditional villages—which regularly conform to a grid, with houses’ entrances all facing the same direction—and in the positioning of the ancestral hall

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‘in alignment with the main lane and the gate tower so that the shrine deities or ancestors can “inspect” the outside without interruption’ (Ip 1995, 108). According to Potter (1970, 142): the height of village houses, the plan and layout of the village, the shape of house roofs even the maximum size that the village could safely attain - were all theoretically governed by fung shui [sic] requirements. […] the exterior and interior construction of village houses, including the exact size and location of doors and the direction in which they were to open, were determined by fung shui.”

The siting and layout of other important buildings also adhered to Feng Shui principles; for example, the external environment of the Tai Fu Tai Mansion (the residence of a senior government official of the Qing Dynasty, built in the middle of the nineteenth century in San Tin) fits into the Form School’s Feng Shui model, with hills supporting its back and an open space in front, whilst its internal layout presents three courtyards (Mak and So 2015). Finally, the location and construction of graves in the New Territories were influenced by Feng Shui and until recently ‘much time and expense’ was ‘devoted (where family resources allow[ed]) to finding an ideal site’ (Wesley-Smith 1994, 228).

4.2 Uses of and Attitudes Towards Feng Shui in Hong Kong Hong Kong’s past history, particularly the 150 years it spent under British colonial rule, produced an identity distinct from that of mainland China (Mathews et al. 2008) and also a very different relationship with Feng Shui. Drawing mainly on interviews with key stakeholders, but also on secondary sources, this section explores the role Feng Shui has played in shaping Hong Kong inhabitants’ values and to what extent the habitus of Feng Shui has influenced people’s decisions in relation to the built environment. Whilst emphasis is placed on current uses of , and attitudes towards, Feng Shui, its historic impact is also reconsidered—as a context for making sense of contemporary thinking and remaining rural–urban divisions. A total of ten built environment experts were interviewed between May and October 2018, with individuals representing the sectors listed in Table 4.1.

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Table 4.1 Interviews (Hong Kong) Respondent code

Profession/organisation

Date of interview

CG1 (written statement) RE1 (written statement) AP1 AA1

HK Community Group HK Real estate consultancy HK Academic (planning) HK Academic (architecture)/architect HK Architect HK Landscape architect HK Housing Department HK Housing Department HK Housing Department HK Town Planning Department

02 24 29 28

August 2018 October 2018 May 2018 May 2018

31 26 02 02 11 29

May 2018 June 2018 June 2018 June 2018 July 2018 May 2018

Arch LArch (Skype interview) HD1 (group interview with HD2) HD2 (group interview with HD1) HD3 TD1

4.2.1

Past Use and Attitudes Towards Feng Shui

When the British arrived in Hong Kong, indigenous people were living in what is now known as the New Territories and had ‘built a religion based on Feng Shui’ (AA1), worshipping ‘deities and ancestral spirits’ in the hope that they ‘may help the villagers to get rich and have a healthy and secure life’ (Hayes 1983, 5). They erected their own villages and constructed their own dwellings in adherence with Feng Shui principles. Feng Shui forests were an integral part of these settlements and, besides their symbolic function, they had a practical purpose (see Anderson and Anderson 1973): they protected villages ‘from the monsoon wind’ (AP1), landslide (Arch) and heavy rain; sheltered them from sunlight (TD1) and sometimes even served as a defence against ‘bandits’ (AP1). As in other parts of China, people built pagodas next to villages, using Feng Shui principles to figuratively ‘raise the hill’ to ensure that some of their descendants would ‘make it to the imperial exam and become one of the imperial servants of the Emperor’ (see previous chapter), therefore guaranteeing protection to the village (Arch).4 Feng Shui was therefore ‘embedded in the minds of people’ (Hayes 2006, 15) and was integral to the culture of the indigenous communities living in this part of Hong

4 Today, the only surviving pagoda in Hong Kong is at Ping Shan.

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Kong, differentiating them from both the ruling authority and the urban population. The Villagers and the British Government From the nineteenth century onwards, Feng Shui played an important role in shaping the relationship between the Colonial Government and villagers. The latter insisted that ‘land [be used] according to tradition, according to Feng Shui, according to the culture […] and that the British Government must […] respect the culture and Feng Shui’ (TD1). And indeed ‘the ruling British authorities at an early date showed sympathy’ towards this practice (Bruun 2008, 128–129) and gave Hong Kong ‘the freedom of religion’ (Chan 2011, 11). For instance, when they leased the New Territories in 1898, they agreed that ancestral graves would never be moved and that local traditions would be respected (Ho 2018, 86); they also ‘issue[d] some instruction to the civil servants, asking them to observe’ these roles (TD1). Although the government accepted and respected traditional customs (Ho 2018) and negotiated with village leaders when constructing, for example, new roads (Watson and Watson 2004), conflicts frequently erupted when new development was planned in this part of Hong Kong. The local population often opposed development plans on Feng Shui grounds (Emmons 1992; Hayes 2006; Ho 2018) and the British administration spent considerable sums of money on appeasing and compensating villagers (Bruun 2008). The building of a road called ‘The Gap’ in Hong Kong Island is a good example of this tension, which saw people ‘thrown into a state of abject terror and fright, on account of the disturbance which amputation of the Dragon’s limb would cause to the Feng Shui of Hong Kong’ (Eitel 1873, 2). According to Bruun (2008, 45), however, the practice of opposing buildings and railway construction and mining operations on Feng Shui grounds during the second half of the nineteenth century was sometimes a ‘convenient means of manipulating popular sentiments and particularly aggression towards foreigners’ on the part of the imperial government on the other side of the border. The Villagers and the Urban Population The cultural practices and beliefs of the indigenous communities not only contrasted with those of the new rulers: ‘the rural communities and religions of the indigenous New Territories residents were [also] significantly different from those in the city’ (Ho 2018, 86). When the New Territories were leased, the Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong Island were

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‘overwhelmingly migrants; […] people came and went without restriction, their decisions determined by the employment market, the advice of friends and relatives, or the situation at home in China’ (Hayes 2006, 18). In the Chinese part of the city, life ‘was feverish and exciting, and very different from the settled humdrum existence of rural life, which was something that most [people] had probably left their homes to avoid’ (ibid., 18). The Chinese community also included a small elite, mainly comprising merchants and entrepreneurs, which had access to an Anglo-Chinese education that allowed them to be employed in Western businesses, further distancing ‘the inhabitants of Hong Kong from their country cousins across the way’ (ibid., 21). Overall ‘the contrast between the old and newly-added parts of the Colony and their people could hardly have been greater’ (ibid., 22). The divide continued into the second half of the twentieth century as migrants from mainland China streamed into Hong Kong, settling on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon but seldom venturing into the rural hinterland of the New Territories. This meant that ‘the urban and the non-urban existed in parallel […] but did not necessarily engage one another’ (AP1). This changed in the 1970s when ‘tension started to build up’ (AP1) as a result of the New Town Policy. Public and speculative developments located in the New Towns were magnets for the urban population, bringing hitherto urban people into the New Territories. Some villages were razed and villagers resettled. Others found themselves with new high-rise neighbours—and tensions quickly erupted, centred on the desire to protect Feng Shui from the disruption of insensitive development (AP1/TD1; see also Lai 2015). But the overall impact of the development programme is contested: whilst some point to the disruption caused, to village life and to Feng Shui, others draw attention to the benefits gained from compensation and the so-called Small House Policy5 : through that policy, and wider development processes, ‘[…] the situation of most village families in development areas had improved beyond recognition. Especially in and around the New Towns, they had become 5 In order to build the New Towns, the government had to expropriate land from local villagers. As ‘cash payment would be too expensive’ and uncompensated expropriation ‘would be likely to result in confrontation with villagers’, the Colonial Government introduced the Small House Policy in 1972 (Lai 2000, 211). This entitled all male ‘indigenous villagers’ above the age of 18 to acquire a piece of land in the New Territories on which to build their small house (of a regulated size) with the payment of just a small premium (TD1).

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urban-villagers. With their future assured, and their past preserved, they […] were indubitably getting the best of both words’ (Hayes 2006, 111).

4.2.2

Contemporary Use and Attitudes Towards Feng Shui

It has been claimed that Feng Shui remains an ‘integral part of everyday life in Hong Kong’ (Bruun 2008, 139), with old traditions often being assigned new relevance or reinterpreted and emphasis placed on protecting Feng Shui’s legacy in urban heritage. As well as being a consideration for individuals and communities, Feng Shui is now a ‘core concern of real estate consultants, developers, [and] businesses’ (RE1) operating in the area, and for built environment professionals and government officials. How these different groups relate to Feng Shui, and the continuing implications for the built environment, is now considered. Individuals and Communities Individual and community attitudes towards Feng Shui reflect the trends in population movement and community development highlighted in previous sections. There are regular incidences of opposition to urban change linked to claims of disruption to Feng Shui, with the high-speed rail extension from mainland China to Hong Kong being a recent example (AP1; AA1). It is also common for community groups, contending that a development ‘will destroy the Feng Shui of [their] village’ (AA1), ‘to seek compensation from the government’ as the disruption to the ‘balance of the elements’ will necessitate ‘remedial work’ (AP1). The urban–rural division remains important in contemporary attitudes towards Feng Shui. In the New Territories, Feng Shui continues to be a source of identity in ‘the face of modernisation’ (Wesley-Smith 1994, 239). Where proposals for development arise, they are often confronted with the argument that any threat to Feng Shui is a threat to indigenous culture: ‘you cannot ruin our Feng Shui; you cannot ruin our culture’ (TD1). But on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon, that same culture has more limited presence, having been displaced by the arrival of newcomers during the 1950s (TD1). However, the privileging of Feng Shui (and one culture over another) has been a cause of tension, with urban residents sometimes decrying the advantages given to their rural counterparts, with the Small House Policy being an oft-cited example (TD1). Hayes (2006, 2) has previously drawn attention to the differential treatment of the ‘indigenous community’ and the remainder of the population, arguing that ‘[…]

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discords [between them] stemmed largely from the legal and administrative arrangements made for the indigenous inhabitants at the beginning of the century, but were also due to their very different histories and attitudes’. Others, however, contend that in the New Territories the practice of Feng Shui ‘has become more personal and less communal’, making villagers’ ‘perspectives towards Feng Shui […] more similar to those of the urbanite’ (Chan 2011, 10). Ritualistic aspects of Feng Shui, including the timing of significant family events, are adhered to across the territory: auspicious days and times are regularly selected for weddings or funerals (HD3). This adherence to ritual also extends to community projects, which are similarly guided by the ‘Chinese Almanac’, an annual listing of auspicious dates based on the traditional calendar, with key building works on ancestral halls, for example, or commencement of worship in a restored or new hall, planned for a specific date and time (HD3). The Almanac remains hugely popular across the whole of Hong Kong, with many families having their own copy and Bruun (2008, 56) claiming that it is ‘comparable in significance to the Christian Bible’. This ritualistic or chronological adherence is distinct from broader engagement with development processes and from the mobilisation of people behind the protection of ‘good Feng Shui’ as a means of wrestling power and benefits from public planning. But as such mobilisations become more geographically widespread, and not confined to the New Territories, the accusation of ‘pragmatic adoption’ is sometimes made: Feng Shui ‘as an excuse’ that seeks to extract greater benefit and compensation rather that protect any real cultural value (TD1; AA1). This is an important debate, centring on the authenticity of community concerns—or ‘real belief’—versus the opportunistic playing of the ‘culture card’ to maximise local gains (AP1). Young people—whose belief in the power of Feng Shui is less than their parents or grandparents (RE1)—may similarly reference Feng Shui when engaging with development decisions. Whilst there are different levels of attachment to ritualistic practices, and varying depths of belief in the significance of Feng Shui in the wider built environment, these values tend to proliferate even if they are not uniformly strong: even ‘foreigners who live and work in this city’ sometimes adopt key principles (Chan 2011, 16) and, more generally, Hong Kong’s population subconsciously accepts ‘certain aspects and concepts of Feng Shui in their life’ (ibid., 15) even where deeper belief may be lacking.

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Evidence of this, from across Hong Kong’s population, can be discerned from attitudes and language, with concern expressed over the look of development: railway sidings that ‘look just like a graveyard’ or buildings that resemble funeral candles—you can still see that ‘people are concerned about things like that’ (HD3). However, Feng Shui is sometimes a hidden driver of public opinion and personal decisions: belief in it is not always admitted openly. ‘Even though you believe in Feng Shui [and] design your home according to the advice of the Feng Shui Master, maybe you don’t want to disclose it to your friends [or] to other people’ (HD2). Social norms and behaviours in Hong Kong have ‘westernised’ (Arch) to the extent that people may fear ridicule or being labelled superstitious. On the other hand, amongst communities in which belief in the power of Feng Shui is strong, it may be the case that people want personal credit for their successes—they want others to acknowledge their hard work and not ascribe everything to Feng Shui (HD2). Built Environment Professionals—Architects and Designers In this section, and the two that follow, we examine a triad of interests that directly ‘make’ the built environment: architects/designers, their (business) clients and public regulators. To what extent does Feng Shui permeate the thinking of these actors, and to what extent do relationships between these actors consolidate that thinking? Architects in practice and in academia were interviewed, with many arguing that Feng Shui is integral to the ‘common sense of the designer’ with the majority of ‘Chinese architects [having] Feng Shui on their minds when proposing a design for their clients’ (HD3). The real estate consultant reflected broadly on what is expected of designers in Hong Kong: […] architects and interior designers are expected to have given thought to Feng Shui issues in general terms prior to submitting designs to their clients. Individual clients may have particular concerns, which still need to be addressed, but the general principles would be expected to have been taken into consideration. (RE1)

It was claimed that many ‘architects will believe in Feng Shui’ (HD1), often applying its principles without explaining this to their clients (AA1). In some instances, such explanation is not needed as the expectations of

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client and architect are aligned: Hong Kong clients will naturally trust a Hong Kong architect to maintain good Feng Shui. In other instances, the client may be unaware of the strictures of good Feng Shui, but those strictures are integral to the logic of design: ‘for a designer, for us, Feng Shui is something logical, something to do with how the microclimate works, the [orientation to] cardinal points and [how to optimise] human comfort’ (LArch). Common sense and Feng Shui come together in a rational framework (RE1) that seeks harmony with the natural environment (HD1). The principles of Feng Shui find alignment with the practices of design in the mind of the architect: for example, studies of microclimate are important, ‘making best use of available sunlight [and] of air currents’ (HD1). Generally, architects are guided by a selective form of Feng Shui in which ‘functional aspects’ related, for example, to landscape and cardinal points are accepted whilst those deemed ‘superstitious’, concerned with water flow and choice of specific plants, trees and shrubs, are regularly jettisoned (LArch)—unless of course the client insists on those particular choices (HD3). The Business Community—Clients Many Hong Kong business leaders attach great importance to good Feng Shui. Many of the ‘big companies, both international and local, will usually have a Feng Shui master’ (AP1) or a team dedicated to ensuring that bad Feng Shui does not undermine business success. Concern is shown for the timing, form and future management or adjustment of projects. On timing, they will seek advice from experts, who will in turn consult the Chinese Almanac, on the right (auspicious) days to start a big building project (AP1). Indeed, entire project timetables can be dictated by the sequencing of auspicious days: the right day to start, the right day on which to stage a significant event (laying foundations or completing the super-structure of a bridge) and the right day on which to complete the project (HD3). On form, Feng Shui experts will be given oversight of ‘the layout, internal or otherwise’ (AP1) of a project, in the hope that new offices, hotels or residential developments will benefit from good Feng Shui (Arch). Even sceptical business leaders, or those with little understanding of Feng Shui, fear the demoralising effect of bad Feng Shui, and the reaction it can provoke amongst some workers, and will therefore accept the need to consider this factor in building design and layout—especially in company headquarters (AA1). In terms of adjustment, enrolling the advice of a Feng Shui master is often an initial

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response of an ailing business: when ‘business is not going well […] they will find a Feng Shui master to come in and check’ the premises, moving ‘people around, so it will have better Feng Shui’. Some resort to clearly non-functional remedies including the placing of ancient coins in their buildings so as to improve their commercial success (LArch). According to the Vice President of the International Feng Shui Association, ‘[…] the bigger the building or the development in Hong Kong, the more likely it is that they will consult a Feng Shui practitioner’ (Keegan 2018, para. 9). Businesses centrally concerned with finance (financial rather than nonfinancial firms) have a reputation for close attention to Feng Shui, which frames the ‘behaviour of […] significant financial institutes’. An oftencited example is the acrimony arising from the orientation and design of the Bank of China Tower relative to nearby HSBC headquarters (AP1), which is detailed later in this chapter. The desire to respect a widespread belief, or the adherence of business owners to the same belief, results in a translation of the habitus of Feng Shui into the habitat of business practice. Whilst some interviewees agreed that many developers and other businesses give consideration to good Feng Shui in the design of their buildings because ‘they believe in it’ (AA1; HD2; HD3; LArch), they also noted clear commercial interest. ‘The developer and all the main contractors will look at Feng Shui much more than any other professional because […] they need to make sure the whole project [runs] smoothly’ as they are ‘investing money’ (HD3). There are two dimensions to a project running smoothly: avoiding offence to other interests and maximising eventual profit. These two dimensions are of course closely related. The landscape architect noted how clients often appear ‘very interested in whether the geomancy or Feng Shui is working positively for the development’ because they see this as intrinsically important and/or because potential occupants of a building may take a dim view of poor Feng Shui (LArch). But it is not always easy to know who the good Feng Shui is for: owners or tenants. The idea that adherence to good Feng Shui is concealed (Arch), with company directors meeting the Feng Shui master discreetly on a Sunday morning and not wanting to be judged ‘superstitious’ by colleagues or employees (Arch) suggests a deeper, albeit guarded, belief. On the other hand, some directors openly display their cynicism, and their desire to please others (HD3), for the sake of the business. They are open about their engagement of a trusted Feng Shui expert, who is there to ensure the comfort of occupants and workers (HD3). International companies

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operating in Hong Kong feel it is important to ‘[…] respect the local beliefs and would not take a lease on an office or business premises or approve the layout without having made sure that their local staff would not find Feng Shui problems’ (RE1). Likewise, many of those ‘local staff would try to prevent their employers making Feng Shui errors, as these may lead to “bad business” which would then have negative effects on them personally’ (RE1). There is therefore upward pressure, from businesses and workers, to ensure that places of work—rented office spaces in this case—deliver good Feng Shui. Occupant businesses and workers exert pressure—or social demand—on developers to deliver the right kinds of spaces, and those developers—whether they believe in Feng Shui or not—look to a ‘Feng Shui sector’ to guide them to the right design and development decisions. Regulators—Government Although it is difficult to obtain official corroboration, there is tacit evidence of government regulators and other officials taking account of Feng Shui in their decision-making. This ‘evidence’ ranges from the many rumours of Feng Shui masters being hired to oversee public projects (CG1) to actual outcomes, where projects or corrections, clearly evidence the application of Feng Shui. In the category of rumour, it has long been suggested that the Bank of China Tower ‘is like a dagger […] facing the former colonial residence of the governor’ (AP1) which is located on an adjacent hill. Popular legend has it that the ‘building was deliberately designed in a blade-like shape to reflect bad Feng Shui to the Government House and […] British administration’ (Bruun 2008, 139). After the tower had been completed, ‘the then governor invited a Feng Shui master to see what could [be done] to soften the very aggressive impact’. There were apparently few effective options and so, after the handover in 1997, the first Chief Executive (of the newly created SAR) is said to have refused to move into the residence because of its bad Feng Shui (AP1). Subsequent occupants reported problems stemming from the flow of negative energy and had various water features installed in an attempt to divert that flow and mitigate the impact (HD3) (see also Bruun 2008; Chan 2011). Whilst much of what happened in relation to the Bank of China Tower and Governors’ Residence is hearsay, there are also examples of clear (albeit controversial) public decisions.

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More clear-cut cases include the former CEO of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation who hired ‘a Feng Shui man’ to work on the development of a new park, using HK$200,000 of public money (Arch). This led to a reprimand from the public audit office and the eventual resignation of the CEO (Arch) (see also Chan 2011). It is one thing to demonstrate awareness of, and even respect for, Feng Shui; but it is quite another thing to commit public money to development projects and therefore openly contaminate the ‘rationality’ of public decision-making with the subjectivity of local belief. For that reason, the regulatory impact of Feng Shui is more private and subtle. A particularly bold claim from the interviews was that public officials ‘all believe [in Feng Shui] secretly but don’t put it openly’ (Arch). Personal belief may be seen as a handicap when acting in a professional capacity: some communities may well agree with—and respect—their position, but there is always the risk of being seen as superstitious (HD3) and questions being raised over their decisions or, like the CEO, their commitment of public money. Officials therefore choose to act ‘subtly, not officially’ (HD3), respecting and accommodating the needs of villagers, especially where development is planned in the New Territories. The influence of regulation can be read in plans, which may be changed or modified so that villages are either not affected, or compensation claims can be minimised, or affected residents can be moved out of harm’s way (AA1). Feng Shui clearly features in negotiations between government and communities with a traditional attachment to Feng Shui (AP1). Indeed, the Lands Department has established precise ‘guidelines to handle claims’, taking into account ‘the reasonableness of the claim with reference to previous similar claims, the distance between the locations of the public works and the villages or sites whose Fung Shui is allegedly affected, the relevant deity spots, the village size and population’ (Fung 2014, para. 18). Such operations are frequently ‘very, very expensive’ (AA1), with millions spent on Feng Shui compensation and remediation in recent years (Moore 2010). Spending money on good Feng Shui is frowned upon, but investing in minimising cultural disruption, and ensuing conflict, is viewed as an unavoidable cost of development planning in Hong Kong. Those interviewed for this case study were split on whether regulators’ decisions, consciously or subconsciously, are influenced by respect for Feng Shui in cases where other actors, usually communities, are not making the case for preserving Feng Shui. Some dismissed any general tendency to assimilate geomancy in planning decisions (HD3) whilst others drew

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a distinction between officials and elected members, with the former expected to be on the side of rationality and the latter more influenced by social norms and the expectations of the general population, upon whom they ultimately depend for re-election. However, whilst interviewees differed on the perceived degree of influence that Feng Shui exerted on decision-making, they nevertheless agreed that the planning system in Hong Kong is run by professionals who have an understanding of the role played by Feng Shui in creating ‘a better environment for people’, delivering many ‘physical advantages’ (TD1). Regulators and politicians tend to marry technical knowledge and/or economic rationality with a functional view of Feng Shui: they are frequently willing ‘to be convinced’ of the good reasons why protecting or enhancing Feng Shui will ‘bring benefit to the public’ (TD1). One good example of this was the campaign to save the west wing of the former Central Government Offices (CGO) on Government Hill. ‘Since the relocation of the Government headquarters to the harbour front, the Government had planned to sell the west wing site to private developers for commercial [re]development’. But those plans sparked opposition from heritage conservation groups, who arranged for an architect and Feng Shui master to ‘come out to talk about how the demolition of the west wing would damage the Feng Shui of Government Hill’. Their analysis of the problems that would be caused by demolition drew interest from local newspapers, and although there was no direct government response, it ‘eventually, in 2012, […] dropped the redevelopment project and gave the entire CGO a heritage grading’ (CG1).

4.3

The Spaces of Feng Shui in Hong Kong

So far, discussion has sought to identify how different actors respond to the impetus of Feng Shui, extending to the way in which relationships between those actors prompt different actions. In general terms, it seems clear that belief in, or perception of benefit from, Feng Shui, results in impacts on new development and the preservation of existing development features. There is a set of values embodied in Feng Shui that are core to people’s habitus. Drawing on the same set of interviews, complemented with literature sources, we now turn to look at the various ‘spaces’ of Feng Shui in the city: the home, commercial sites, and public spaces and buildings. Having established the presence of Feng Shui thinking, the focus on space (and actual development) provides an opportunity to examine the transition—highlighted in Chapter 1—from absolute space

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(in which urban practices and form are rooted in tradition, belief and linked social values) to abstract space (in which space is dominated and monetarised for commercial gain). Attention is given to the way in which agents of change—individuals, commercial interests and regulators—make and remake the domestic, commercial and public spaces of Feng Shui. 4.3.1

The Domestic Space of Feng Shui

For the Chinese, a house is ‘the focus of aspirations – social and spiritualof the people who made it’ (Knapp 1999, 1) and the use of Feng Shui in domestic spaces reflects and supports these aspirations. Wealthier and poorer people alike aspire towards ‘good health, good prospects and money’ (HD3) and the home is the focus for achieving these things. Buying the services of a Feng Shui expert is akin to taking out ‘second insurance’ (Arch). In the past, a great many wealthier homebuyers would heed the advice of a Feng Shui expert when planning and building their homes, or hire an expert to closely examine the Feng Shui of a home being bought second-hand (RE1). But ‘right now in Hong Kong […] few people can afford the land [on which] to build their own house’ (HD3) and are more likely to shop around for an apartment, engaging a Feng Shui expert to check the geomancy and rejecting homes that do not meet their requirements (AA1). The services of Feng Shui masters can be expensive—‘like celebrities’ (Chan 2011, 2)—or relatively affordable (Arch): Bruun (2008, 139) notes that in Hong Kong ‘[…] everyday people use the specialists for the same purposes as do rural people in south China, while the wealthier tend to have their own personal Feng Shui advisors, just like the family GP’. The Chinese phrase ‘better believe it than not’ (HD3) seems to aptly fit attachment to Feng Shui. Feng Shui has a popular momentum, featuring in ‘many TV programs, newspaper and magazine columns, and popular movies in which high-profile and famous Feng Shui masters offer advice’ (Chan 2011, 1). New residential buildings are often advertised for their ‘Feng Shui location’, which ‘will bring fortune’ and good health to people who live in those flats (TD1). Deeper belief fuses with economic rationality: in a context where Feng Shui appears so important, homebuyers are undoubtedly concerned with the future value and saleability of homes, viewing ‘good Feng Shui’ as both a sound investment as a well as a source of personal well-being.

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However, the deeper value attached to Feng Shui is revealed by the ways in which occupants of flats with poor Feng Shui (where the ‘main configuration and direction of the building’ is wrong) do ‘small things’ to counter ‘the main Feng Shui’. Outside the home, these can include the placement of different objects including octagonal mirrors (HD3). Inside, colour changes in living and cooking spaces, or the use of plants, ornaments or furniture provide ways of correcting energy flows (Chan 2011). If they are able to engage an expert, they may well be told to have a door repositioned. But if this is not possible, because of cost, smaller actions will provide cheaper alternatives: well-placed ‘red flowers’ or ‘more ‘Bagua’ outside a window’ (HD3). Such changes can appear superficial (and superstitious rather than functional) but are illustrative of a belief beyond economic rationality. Although these practices have a long provenance, the emphasis on them today (as population is concentrated in difficult-to-alter apartments) has arguably helped turn Feng Shui into a form of interior design (Feuchwang 2003), which is affordable and also rooted in Western influence. The seasonal movement and placement of objects has become a middle-class interpretation of Feng Shui sometimes inspired by ‘contemporary Chinese writers on the subject who are trained in Western universities’ and well-versed in Western tastes (Arch). Feng Shui has been subject to both ‘interiorisation’ (for reasons of affordability) and ‘Westernisation’ (that takes low-cost interiorisation, rooted in a long tradition of altering qi with simple objects, and makes it expensive) which summarises its ancient values and repackages them for the global marketplace (Bruun 2008). Whilst Global Feng Shui can be found in London, New York and Sydney, it is also present in Hong Kong—and viewed by some as ‘not the real thing’ (Arch) but by others as a continuity and expansion of underlying values. It is certainly the case that adherents of a more ‘global’ form of Feng Shui may be less likely to engage in the practices of ancestor worship in which Feng Shui is rooted. The domestic practice of Feng Shui still extends to care for the deceased: the purchase of ‘good Feng Shui land to bury the ancestors and then worship [them] every year’ in the hope that good fortune will follow (HD3). Likewise, ancestral halls retain a central role in this form of ‘foundational’ Feng Shui (AP1; TD1), with great care taken over halls, including the placement of entrances and altars. No alterations to halls will be countenanced without the guidance of a Feng Shui master (HD3). The practice of ancestor worship and the attention to detail when it comes to planning grave sites and protecting ancestral halls

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is perhaps a useful dividing line between more ‘traditional’ and ‘global’ forms of Feng Shui adherence. 4.3.2

The Commercial Space of Feng Shui

Bruun (2008) argues that the foothold gained by Feng Shui in Hong Kong is not only attributable to the permissive attitude of British colonialism, and the celebration of local culture in contrast to Western values, but also results from the alignment between commerce and Feng Shui’s promotion of good fortune. The business sector across China manifests an interest in Feng Shui but nowhere is that interest greater, or more evident, in the layout of commercial space, than in Hong Kong. Today ‘[…] most, if not all, businesses adhere to the principles of Feng Shui. Banks, airlines, telephone companies, shopping centres, hotels and so forth will all have regular Feng Shui checks and spend large sums of money to accommodate recommendations’ (Bruun 2008, 140). Even amongst foreign companies, ‘there are very few so foolish as to ignore [Feng Shui] in their dealings’ (Emmons 1992, 49; see also Hobson 1994). Feng Shui consultants are ‘involved in virtually every project’ (Bruun 2008, 139). They are often consulted on site location, the arrangement of buildings relative to others and on aspects of architectural design. ‘In so far as property development is concerned, no matter what segment, few, if any, developers - international or local - would implement a project unless all aspects of Feng Shui have been addressed’ (RE1). It was noted in the previous section that some business decisions are rooted in the personal beliefs of decision-makers, whilst others are shaped by fear of adverse reaction—from clients and affected communities—if Feng Shui is not respected. ‘Whenever construction is attempted in any part of Hong Kong […], it risks [provoking] opposition of the grounds of disturbed Feng Shui’ (Emmons 1992, 40). The delays that result can threaten the commercial success of development projects (Hobson 1994). Whilst the avoidance of risk is critically important for private enterprise—‘developers simply would not take the risk of getting it wrong’ (RE1)—Feng Shui also presents an opportunity: to increase the value of development projects and lever additional land rent (Chan 2011; Yau 2012). ‘When the Feng Shui is right’, the demand for property—and therefore the price it commands—will increase (LArch). Research into the factors shaping demand for both commercial and residential property show that lessees or homebuyers will pay a premium for housing or office

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rentals with good Feng Shui (Chan 2011; Chau et al. 2001; Tam et al. 1999). Indeed, ‘[…] very few local buyers would invest in premises if they felt that there was negative Feng Shui that could not be successfully mitigated’ (RE1). Levering profit from Feng Shui is normal business practice, with developers advertising good Feng Shui (HD3) or even soliciting ‘the assistance of local Feng Shui masters to promote their new development’ (HD1). For example, in 2007, Henderson Land Development used nine Feng Shui masters in the promotion of its ‘Beverly Hills’ luxury housing development in the New Territories (Chan 2011, 50). This practice has been generic across Hong Kong: ‘in order to make the development more attractive to potential buyers’, developers will provide ‘incentives […] on top of the quality of the design of the building, the quality of materials and accessibility’. And frequently that incentive will be Feng Shui (TD1). How should this commercialisation of Feng Shui be interpreted? It might be argued that culture has been instrumentalised and commodified by rentier capitalism, as a means of extracting additional land rent. On the other hand, commercial developers are in the business of responding to their clients’ needs and tastes. Property markets in modern economies are contoured by an important relationship between producers and consumers, with the latter shaping the behaviour of the former (and vice versa). Producers try to mould consumer taste and also respond to it: they promote and market ideals (defining aspiration) that are easy to replicate and then offer standardised products to homebuyers. But at some point, they must deal with the weight of cultural expectation. There are perhaps three ways of looking at ‘commercialised Feng Shui’: (a) as the pursuit of profit; (b) as inevitable response to cultural predilection; and (c) as the way in which the built environment continues to be shaped by cultural values as the processes of production and consumption are separated. Good Feng Shui is ever-present in residential development but becomes more prominent in marketing during downturns. Interviewees were split on whether the importance of Feng Shui wanes during real estate booms—as ‘no matter what kinds of flat you build, people will buy it’ (TD1)—or whether it adds resilience to business models. It was argued that ‘[…] there are certain developments in Hong Kong that are regarded as having particularly good Feng Shui and these tend to always attract occupiers, no matter what the market conditions’ (RE1). Although it is difficult to untangle the value of Feng Shui from general good design

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and ‘convenience of location’, these things are related: functional Feng Shui tends to overlap with good sense in the layout of buildings, their orientation and their relationship with neighbouring buildings and uses. For the three reasons—and ways of looking at commercialised Feng Shui—noted above, it is clear that business practice has a strong cultural dimension. The Hong Kong skyline—which is a skyline of tall buildings, both commercial and residential, that compete with each other ‘for auspicious Feng Shui like trees competing for sunlight in the jungle’ (Bruun 2008, 139)—speaks to the territory’s attachment to Feng Shui. Indeed, the city is a ‘living testimony to the endurance of traditional cosmologies through the process of modernization and beyond’ and its architecture ‘captures this mode of existence’ by combining traditional ideas with modern design (ibid., 136). But it is not only separate buildings that are products of this commercial Feng Shui. Development is sensitive to context and developers regularly insist that ‘the whole landscape design [in which buildings are to be situated] be reviewed by a Feng Shui master’ (LArch). Attention is given to site context, the relationships between buildings, and the flow of energy to and from the site. For residential schemes, it will be important that a road does not go ‘straight into the front door of someone’s house’; and for all development sites, the directional flow of water is significant as it can denote the flow or wealth, to be lost or gained (LArch). The sorts of sharp corners found on the Bank of China building are avoided, as these disrupt the relationship between buildings: rather, ‘buildings have curved rooftops and silhouettes and each building is consciously located with an open view towards the waterfront or open space, as circumstances allow’ (Bruun 2008, 139). However, it is at building level that developers have greatest control. Southerly aspects are important for apartments, but more controversial are the presence of mid-height holes in a great many residential and commercial buildings, including the ‘building with a hole’ in Repulse Bay, which was designed with a ‘large square hole in the middle to allow the Qi to flow through’ (ibid., 139) (Fig. 4.2). The holes—known as ‘dragon gates’—supposedly enable dragons to pass through when flying from the sea back to their mountain roosts (Keegan 2018), although the ‘dragon’ is in fact the qi and according to the Zang Shu (The Book of Burial), living qi flows along mountain ridges, commonly referred to as ‘dragon veins’, before being ‘accumulated at a flat place, when the dragon stops and where watercourses meet’ (Mak and So 2015, 78). Matthews (2019,

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Fig. 4.2 Building with a hole, Repulse Bay (Credit Author)

73) suggests that the Repulse Bay building became a trendsetter, with ‘subsequent buildings in Repulse Bay, and then many other locations, also [having] to provide a ‘dragon’ hole for chi [sic] to flow from interior hills to the ocean’ (see Fig. 4.3). Given Hong Kong’s shortage of developable land (and incredibly high land values) the removal of floor space to make way for a hole might seem remarkable. But the loss of floor space value appears to have been more than compensated by rising unit values resulting from the perception of ‘good Feng Shui’. However, whether these holes deliver good Feng Shui, or are really about Feng Shui at all, is a topic of considerable debate in Hong Kong. Interviewees were consistent in their view that the Repulse Bay apartments, and other ‘hollow buildings’, including the Central Government Office in Central, barely respect Feng Shui at all (Arch; HD1; AA1)—and the holes are entirely pointless! The Vice President of the International Feng Shui Association explains that ‘[…] the dragon is the energy of the land, [which] passes through the mountains; it passes through from underground – it doesn’t pass through any holes’ (Keegan 2018, para. 19). Repulse Bay’s ‘building with a hole’ is allegedly a copy of a Miami apartment complex (Arch) and its architect was ‘almost sued’ for copyright infringement (AA1). The possible origin of the ‘dragon’ theory is

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Fig. 4.3 Repulse Bay (Credit Author)

explored by Lo (2018): one of the creative directors of Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, which developed the site in 1986, claimed that ‘the ‘spirit dragon’ theory emerged locally. It helped Hongkongers to make peace with the new building’ after the 1920s Repulse Bay Hotel was demolished (ibid., para. 9). Others claim that the concentration of holed buildings in Hong Kong has pragmatic function, ventilating the compact urban environments behind the buildings (Arch). But the absence of planning policy requiring ‘ventilation holes’ seems to put pay to this theory. The reality appears to be one of accidental association with Feng Shui. The first building was popularly interpreted as conforming to Feng Shui principles, when in fact it was an architectural feature designed to bestow interest at a time when land values were lower. Its measured impact on those values, later on, were enough to inspire copies—and the popular belief that holes in big buildings signal good Feng Shui. Although that belief may not be rooted in the ‘truth’ of Feng Shui, it speaks to the power of Feng Shui to shape commercial decisions and affect land value. It also evidences the subjectivities and uncertainties of Feng Shui in a city

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with more than 10,000 masters,6 many offering ‘subjective interpretation’ (Bruun 2008, 3) and some verging on the fake, motivated by commercial rather than cultural impulses. The holes, their use and promotion, seem to evidence a purer pursuit of profit: Feng Shui uprooted from belief and cynically instrumentalised in the creation of an abstract space. Other examples of commercial development being affected by Feng Shui include Hong Kong Disneyland, located on Lantau Island. The Disney Corporation made several significant alterations to the layout of its theme park, reorientating the site by 12 degrees on the advice of consultants ‘to achieve the correct alignment in relation to the mountains behind and the water in front’ (Bruun 2008, 140) and installing a curved rather than straight path from the rail station to the main park entrance to prevent ‘positive energies’ seeping away to the sea (Parkes 2018). Such decisions were motivated by a desire for business success rather than higher land value—and presumably had negligible impact on the overall development cost. Business success also appeared to be the motivation for HSBC’s respect of Feng Shui when it redeveloped its headquarters in Central in the 1980s (Emmons 1992). The bank’s former building, dating from 1935, occupied a site to the south of Statue Square. Statue Square had been laid out after reclamation works pushed the sea further from HSBC’s first headquarters (Wardley House, used between 1865 and 1882); its purpose (agreed with the governor, AA1) was to support Feng Shui and prevent any future buildings blocking the direct view of the sea from the headquarters. The current HSBC building was designed by the British Architect Norman Foster, who worked with a Feng Shui master on the building’s design and layout. However, the good Feng Shui achieved was disrupted by the arrival of the Bank of China Tower, which was designed without any regard to Feng Shui (RE1) and with its lateral ‘X’ patterning, sharp edges and ‘two aerials on top, resembling the incense sticks burned for the dead’ (Bruun 2008, 139). Designed by the Chinese architect I. M. Pei and completed in 1989, the building was accused of ‘upsetting the living environment and the people around’ (Dan 2006, 2). Its perceived negative impacts were such that both HSBC and nearby Citibank made adjustments to their own buildings in order to ‘offset the negative impact’ (RE1) of the new tower. HSBC installed ‘canons’ on the roof of its building (actually service winches) as a defence against 6 https://www.blogshotels.com/au/theme-travel-en/others-travel-en/the-power-offeng-shui-in-hong-kong/.

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the negative qi (see Fig. 4.4); the design of Citibank’s new building on Three Garden Road, completed in 1992, was curved to provide a similar defence. A water pond was also placed between the Citibank headquarters and the Bank of China Tower (AP1). There is a history in Hong Kong of considerable sums of money being spent by private enterprise on delivering good Feng Shui, or on correcting or ameliorating poor Feng Shui. Many other examples could be cited. The owners of the Hopewell Centre in Wan Chai, for example, were advised to add a swimming pool on the roof, as the building resembled a candle and was therefore a fire risk. The owners duly acquiesced—adding a circular pool in order to reassure the occupants (Hobson 1994). In other examples, wrongly positioned doors remain permanently closed or are blocked up if they disrupt the flow of qi (HD3). Elsewhere, interior design—for hotels and office buildings—is carefully managed, and the placement of furniture closely supervised (Bruun 2008). None of these corrections alter the quantum of leasable space, but are designed to bring good fortune to owners and occupants—and perhaps represent an inevitable response to cultural predilection. The link to profit taking— so clear in the development of new apartments—is perhaps more subtle

Fig. 4.4 HSBC headquarters and Bank of China Tower (Credit Author)

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in the examples given above, but in all cases the lines between commercial, functional and cultural Feng Shui are blurred. Actions mix belief with business sense, making it difficult to untangle the two. 4.3.3

The Urban and Public Space of Feng Shui

The previous sections have explored the domestic and commercial spaces of Feng Shui, in which private individuals or enterprise are the primary actors. Attention now turns to the ‘urban scale’ and public space and how regulation by public actors may reinforce Feng Shui’s influence. On this topic, interviewees noted that ‘there are no recommendations or no legal requirements’ in Hong Kong to adhere to Feng Shui principles in the planning of settlements and infrastructures or in the design of buildings (HD2). Moreover, there is no codification of Feng Shui and no obligation placed on public officials to consider it in any way (HD3). But, the clear view of all participants in this research was that ‘culture shapes planning’ (Arch), not always directly and in a codified (or legal) way, but through informal channels—via the mindsets, attitudes and behaviours of those public officials. Likewise, regulation is responsive to public attitude, and concern with Feng Shui is mixed with more general attention to history and heritage. Although not ‘an official requirement […] regulators [will] take certain principles into consideration when they draw up boundaries and orientation plans’ (RE1). Outline Zoning Plans,7 for example, will direct development away from ancestral halls (and especially their entrances). Those plans are generally sensitive to the belief that invading the space close to halls will be ‘harmful to the whole village’, and therefore tend to designate open space or conservation areas in these locations (TD1). But avoidance or protection (from development) of important Feng Shui sites can be costly, in terms of land revenues to the government. Likewise, communities often want very particular site characteristics for graves— only through very detailed consultation, and great flexibility on the part of regulators, is it possible to agree the location and design of cemeteries (AP1)—and will not wish to face those cemeteries (HD1). Because of 7 These are statutory plans prepared by the Town Planning Board that detail the admissible land uses and infrastructure requirements in an area. They are district-level plans that ‘translate and implement broad planning objectives and principles stipulated at the territorial and subregional level to the local level’ in urban areas (Chiu 2016, 170).

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land prices and the need to maximise density and utility, dealing with these sensitivities is a ‘very thorny planning issue in Hong Kong at the moment’ (AP1). Regulatory responses to Feng Shui might appear to add costs without generating direct public benefit, but these responses contribute to a built environment that satisfies both commercial and community requirements, evidencing shared cultural referents. Working with local communities (and with commercial interests), regulators often modify infrastructure plans in order to deliver urban and public spaces that accommodate those referents (AP1). This regulatory mindset is not confined to the New Territories (where most roads ‘have a serpentine quality that is due more to Feng Shui requirements than to bad engineering’ [Potter 1970, 143]): rather, there are examples of its consequences across Hong Kong. Interviewees drew attention to a tunnel next to the Mandarin Hotel in Central that serves no practical purpose, other than to alter the flow of energy. There was speculation as to whether this was ‘required’ or ‘paid for’ by the Mandarin Group (AP1). Outside the Tin Hau Temple in Stanley (Hong Kong Island), a ‘Feng Shui Lane’ renders ‘whole areas nonbuildable, to make sure no buildings will block the Feng Shui’ (HD3) (see Fig. 4.5). Blocking development, thereby protecting significant Feng Shui sites from disturbance, is a common ‘intervention’. Feng Shui forests, for example, are often designated as conservation areas: the function of the forests, with respect to nearby villages and important sites, is to deliver good Feng Shui: formal protection ensures that they continue to perform that role (TD1). Clearly, Feng Shui’s impact on urban form is not the same as it once was under dynastic emperors (see Chapter 1): urban-scale interventions have been substituted with small-scale, incremental actions. Those actions either arise from a union between commercial, community and public interest (where it is not entirely clear whether regulation is driving or being driven by culture—leading to the conclusion that values are shared within a wider decision-making environment, in which communities and commerce exert an influence) or appear to be led by public officials. Examples of the latter include the design of the Mei Tung Housing Estate in Kowloon. Here, the services of a Feng Shui master were directly sought to ensure that the estate ‘harmonised […] with the design of the nearby Temple’ and that windows would not overlook a nearby cemetery (HD2). The building was reorientated and redesigned to meet these requirements and the Master asked to identify an ‘auspicious day’ on which to start

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Fig. 4.5 Opening outside the Tin Hau Temple and Feng Shui Lane (Credit Author)

‘earth breaking activities’ (HD1). The government takes the lead to avoid the later confrontations that bad Feng Shui will inevitably trigger. But mistakes are made: the installation of a piece of public art resembling a tomb at Kwai Chung in the New Territories sparked community protests, leading to an apology and the installation’s removal (HD1).

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Regulation in Hong Kong is underpinned by respect, not only of Feng Shui (as cultural artefact) but also of the beliefs that are an established part of life in Hong Kong. It is difficult to untangle regulatory culture from wider social values, leading to the inevitable conclusion that beliefs are shared, permeating all aspects of private and public life. It is still possible, however, to view Feng Shui as a pragmatic and even coercive tool, with officials using it to elicit public support for development priorities. Back at the Mei Tung Housing Estate, the Housing Department ‘solicited the support of the Chinese Temple Committee’ by offering to confine tall apartment buildings (symbolically representing the mountains) to a site behind the temple (HD1). This provided a means of avoiding conflict: ‘figurative support’ from officials to placate the committee and wider community. Since the 1970s, government in Hong Kong has used Feng Shui as a ‘platform for negotiation, discussion and engagement’ and as a ‘common cultural currency’ (AP1). Expressed concern for Feng Shui is a demonstration of understanding, always signalling the way development will progress: communities will share in the benefits from development, through remedial work or open spaces that ‘protect Feng Shui’ (and happen to provide new amenity), whilst government will achieve its development goals with reduced risk of conflict and delay. This pragmatism, on the part of government, extends to the promotion of the tourist economy. The installation of the 76-metre Guanyin Statue at the Tsz Shan Monastery in Tai Po District (New Territories) in 2015 was opposed by many on the grounds of visual impact (TD1). But its position, height and colour conform to Feng Shui Principles. The argument that Feng Shui is preserved or enhanced—or is just an important consideration—is always a persuasive one in Hong Kong. Tensions around planning are eased by reference to Feng Shui: it is a ‘selling point’, a means of winning public support, of ‘convincing people’ (HD3) and of ‘speeding up the planning process’ (TD1). It has also proven useful in landscape protection: wooded areas become ‘Feng Shui Forests’ with farmers, who might otherwise fell trees and sell the wood, told that ‘these are Feng Shui trees: they are there for your descendants, your grandsons and children. If you cut them it will be bad for them’ (Arch). The narrative here could suggest that Feng Shui is instrumentalised by regulators: deployed to achieve desired ends. But such a conclusion would draw a line between regulators and the communities they serve. It would suggest manipulation of the latter by the former when the more general evidence points to a shared decision-making environment

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in which cultural attachment to Feng Shui is strong. Commercial actors also occupy that environment. When actions in support of, or promoting, Feng Shui are observed there is a natural tendency to question the underlying motive—whether it is one of deeper belief or the pursuit of personal or public gain. Such reasoning may cast doubt on the ‘authenticity’ of outcomes—whether they evidence belief or manipulation: Feng Shui as cultural artefact or commercial gloss. An introduction to these questions provides the final focus for this chapter.

4.4

The Authenticity of Hong Kong’s Feng Shui

‘The acceptance of Feng Shui by the British Government, combined with a concentration of Chinese business activity in the territory, provided a perfect incubator for Feng Shui practices’ (Madeddu and Zhang 2017, 714) and therefore allowed Feng Shui to flourish in Hong Kong at a time when in China it was considered a dangerous superstition. But Hong Kong’s close relationship with the Western world—which led to an influx of groups with wide-ranging values and religious beliefs—alongside episodic migration from mainland China, has reshaped the territory’s relationship with Feng Shui. A spectrum of beliefs now coexist: for some, Feng Shui has been trivialised, and is adhered to in a superficial way, as a source of good fortune. For others, it retains great cultural significance—a spiritual belief that continues to connect humans with natural and celestial forces. Open belief is sometimes suppressed, with people not wishing to appear backward or superstitious. Hence, the rationale behind decisions is questioned, perhaps because commercial forms of Feng Shui appear to lack the authenticity rooted in deeper belief. This loss of perceived authenticity began with the blurring of rural and urban populations, especially since the beginning of Hong Kong’s New Town Policy. Whereas Feng Shui was once quietly practised within rural communities, evidencing rootedness in nature, it is now noisily celebrated on television and in commercial advertising: it has become ‘part of Hong Kong people’s life, whether you are a believer or a non-believer’ (Chan 2011, 14). Arguably, there has been both a dilution of Feng Shui and an expansion: that dilution has seen it elevated to the status of ubiquitous custom, at the cost of detachment from its origins. In any such situation, argument will focus on the loss of authenticity versus modernisation—finding contemporary relevance for an old custom.

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That contemporary relevance is frequently commercial in nature. The actions of companies, including property developers, connect to local custom as a means of valorising their business activities and their products. Sometimes this is done well and sometimes badly: many buildings in Hong Kong have misinterpreted principles or delivered an ersatz form or Feng Shui that may offend rather than assuage local sensitivities. It can be argued that the commercialisation of Feng Shui—its dilution— destroys the absolute link with nature and spirituality, transforming it into an abstraction that serves only the assetisation of land and property. Moreover, its role in serving the well-being of communities is lost—and replaced with service to capitalist interest. Others have concluded that ‘compared to the past, Feng Shui has become more commercialised and its application has been more personal and individualistic’ (Chan 2011, 16). This view is reinforced when doubts are raised as to the motivations of individual company directors and public officials. The authenticity of action—arising from ‘a dynamic relationship among people, places and meanings’ (Piazzoni 2018, 155)—is replaced by instrumental use of custom: Feng Shui mobilised by commercial rather than cultural impulses. The ‘meaning’ of that custom therefore shifts, almost becoming a form of trickery: Feng Shui as a selling point in the marketing of new apartments, fake masters giving contradictory advice to homebuyers, or regulators easing development processes with concessions to local communities—that for many are about amenity, dressed up as custom. The commercialisation of Feng Shui could denote a transition: from the absolute space of belief and deeper meaning (the values that place and orientate people in the world) to an abstract space that serves profit and in which meaning is eroded and eventually lost. But there are problems with this interpretation. Feng Shui today is part of the world in which governance (and the regulatory function) coordinates the relationship between public and commercial interest. That regulation is part of a political economy that shapes markets and the practices of production and consumption. It is inevitable that custom will become caught up in, and modified by, the networks of economic and social relationships that shape the world around us, including the built environment. Feng Shui, like anything else, will adapt to changing needs: authenticity ‘is in practice never absolute [but] always relative’ (Lowenthal 1995, 123). Questions of authenticity, and the extent to which the absolute space of Feng Shui

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has been lost versus the view that adaptation produces a dynamic authenticity that is more resilient than any static form, is a topic given more attention at the end of this book.

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CHAPTER 5

Conclusions

Abstract Building on case studies of Feng Shui in the historic and modern built environments of Guangdong and Hong Kong, this chapter turns to what has been learnt from the research, further examining the transition, from absolute to abstract space, uncovered in the cases. Through the analysis contained in this book, the aim has been to contribute new understanding to the role of Feng Shui in modern urban development and its regulation, and also to rethink what constitutes authentic Feng Shui today. That authenticity inheres in practice, being socially constructed and reconstructed for different times. Given the retained social demand for Feng Shui in China, it is perhaps inevitable that it now inheres in urban processes and practice, shaping key client– producer relationships. At the root of Feng Shui lies the good sense of human–nature relationships, perhaps making it more relevant now than at any previous time in human history. Keywords Feng Shui · Authenticity · Modern relevance

Our aim, in this book, has been to illustrate the imprint of culture on space using the example of Feng Shui in China. The production of space has a strong social dimension wherever it happens, but over time it is possible to detect a shift in how and who mobilises ‘culture’ and to what © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Madeddu and X. Zhang, Feng Shui and the City, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0847-6_5

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end. That shift owes much to changing production processes, from the direct domestication of space by its occupants to indirect urban processes in which the development of property (and the separation of users from producers) is commercialised and regulated. Broadly, the book has sought to track that change from the early roots of Feng Shui in China, through the political and economic reforms of the twentieth century, to the present day. Drawing on a range of literature, we developed the proposition in Chapter 1 that Feng Shui has a root in human desire to understand and live in harmony with nature. That desire is perhaps an obvious and automatic one, given the significance of nature—the world that humans experience around them—to the survival and prosperity of people in different places. The need to contend with nature is a root of early religion in many societies and in China it provided the foundation for Daoism and a more comprehensive and calculative understanding of how to benefit from the elemental forces that potentially bestow health, well-being and good fortune: the fortune, that is, to not fall foul of nature or of supernatural forces. Knowledge is power and that power was coveted by the emperors, who sought control over the lives and the productivity of ordinary people. In this way, Feng Shui completed a transition from root to abstraction well before any modern period, shifting from social praxis to a source of imperial control and domination. But no transition, or change, is ever complete: it is merely lived through by those who observe it. Feng Shui has continued to evolve, contracting and expanding its function depending on political winds and shifts in cultural and commercial conditions. The primary aim of this book has been to examine Feng Shui today, under the condition of urbanisation, and to explore its more recent mobilisation in urban processes in mainland China and Hong Kong. We started with the idea of a point-to-point transition: a totemic root in which Feng Shui displayed ‘authenticity’ by virtue of the absolute link from belief to the organisation of living environment, and then to a modern abstraction or domination of space for commercial gain. In that transition, Feng Shui eventually becomes a ‘value added’ for land developers: a cultural referent which allows them to sell, and profit, from belief. The intention was to examine this transition in the heartland of China’s economic and political reforms and in another part that was largely insulated from them, or rather encountered a very different set of conditions. Guangdong and Hong Kong, direct neighbours but worlds apart for much of

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the twentieth century, represent Feng Shui under socialism and capitalism respectively, although Chinese socialism never entirely lost its mercantile capitalist root. Having examined modern Feng Shui in the built environment in two case studies, we now turn to what has been learnt from this research, critiquing the neatness of the transition uncovered in the cases. Through this analysis, we aim to contribute greater understanding to the role of Feng Shui in modern urban development and its regulation, and also to rethink what constitutes authentic Feng Shui today.

5.1

Feng Shui’s Transition

Drawing on Lefebvre (1991), we developed the view in Chapter 1 of ‘absolute’ space as an origin and ‘abstract’ space as a destination. But the idea of a point-to-point transition is not a given in all past writing: the idea that spaces serve different but simultaneous purposes for different groups—that there is functional overlap—is perhaps an obvious one. Conflict between groups arises when domination jars against need: when one group prioritises the use value of a space and another its exchange value. But still, a number of influential researchers have contrasted past and present urban processes and joined Lefebvre in arguing for a progressive ‘conquest of space’ (ibid., 325) by capital. Space is put to an increasingly ‘abstract purpose’ (Molotch, 1993, 88); it is transformed into a ‘commodity’ (Stanek, 2011, 151) and all of this happens when capital finds a way, through the instruments of financialisation, to switch into the built environment (Harvey, 1978). Although Lefebvre’s dominated space is not tied to capitalism—but can rather be ‘political’ and ‘institutional’ (1991, 285)—it is clearly the case that most recent writing on the subject places abstract space in the period of late capitalism: abstraction as a contemporary condition in which ‘city building is less and less responsive to human need and more and more driven by entrepreneurial fervour’ (Beauregard, 1994, 730). Our cases explore the role of Feng Shui in the domination of space. They look at whether the direct need for it—arising from belief and cultural attachment—is replaced by its commodification, in the sense that it is itself commodified (in an ‘ersatz’ form) and it becomes a means of dominating space. Its role in domination is twofold: as a means of placating communities who might otherwise reject development or oppose public interventions, and a means of increasing property value.

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But the idea that a cultural praxis rooted in nature—and originating in rural areas—becomes implicated in urban process, also suggests the movement of ideas from rural to urban places. An important theme, especially in the Hong Kong study, was that rural ideas became tangled up in urban development as the territory’s colonial rulers sought to transform a collection of fishing villages into a centre of trade and commerce. During the urbanisation process, it became necessary to navigate and reinterpret beliefs that had originated, and retained much of their potency, in rural society. This theme was strong in Hong Kong because, to some extent, Hong Kong is a closed microcosm of urban development, where the rapid rural to urban transition is readily observable. The same transition is of course crucially important across China, especially along the coastal fringe, where port cities have long attracted migrants and become home to a diversity of beliefs and customs. This theme, however, came out less strongly in the Guangdong case. In reality, the longer history of Guangdong is also the history of Hong Kong. China’s southern coastal fringe was long considered by the Han of the Central Plains as a remote and barbarous frontier. It was the intrusion by foreign adventurers and the opening up of trade that brought the coast to centre-stage in China’s imperial development. Until then, Hong Kong was just another part of that remote and barbarous frontier, home to a scattering of fishing villages. For thousands of years, it shared the common history of the region. Only with the arrival of the British did it detach, politically and economically, from the rest of Guangdong—becoming the microcosm described above. There are two important components of Feng Shui’s transition: the first is the general shift from need (to live in harmony with nature) and understanding (to make sense of the world) to control. That component means coming to see Feng Shui as a source of power, seizing oversight of belief and using it to demonstrate legitimacy. It is predicated on over-lordship, ancient or modern, imperial or capitalist. The second component is the movement of people and the urbanisation process: perspectives on nature being imported to the city, and thereafter adapted to new circumstances. The abstraction of Feng Shui is not only about domination by a ruling or capitalist class, but also about its journey from rural to urban areas. That journey meant a shift away from literal meaning: Feng Shui providing a framework for the arrangement of space at a landscape scale to Feng Shui as both a practical schema for organising domestic space and as a symbolic link to the rural past, with landscape and

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village level practices rescaled for the home, finding more regular expression in representative objects. This rural to urban movement resulted in no loss of absolute meaning, but brought Feng Shui into the (urban) domain of capitalist production. In the Guangdong case, we saw the cultural practices of an indigenous population mingling with the imported beliefs of Han migrants during successive waves of migration. Meanwhile, the two most significant schools of Feng Shui were taking root in the adjoining (modern) provinces of Jiangxi and Fujian. Cosmological observations and divination practices were becoming increasingly sophisticated and providing people with a means of making sense of the world. Feng Shui offered basic answers that became ever more complex, requiring years of study to decipher and apply. Its transition from superstition to pseudoscience— involving the interpretation of Yi Jing by Daoists—became an important element of imperial rule. That pseudoscience became increasingly important for Daoists, elevating their totemic philosophy to the status of religion, and that religion—with Feng Shui as an interpretive tool—became central to the power of the emperors. Emperors became responsible, at a macro scale, for the organisation of space in ways that brought good fortune to themselves and to ruled populations. Through their advisors, they exercised ministry over the beliefs of the population who attributed periods of security and good fortune to their ruler’s attention to matters cosmological. In this way, the practical roots of Feng Shui were conscripted to abstract purpose: social control. Daoists, and other intellectuals, transformed Feng Shui—or its earliest underpinnings—from common sense into a pseudoscience rooted in custom, which commanded the respect of different ethnic groups across southern China. This form of codified Feng Shui then bore a heavy influence on the development of Chinese cities, towns and villages for millennia. It became embedded in society, with responsibility for more strategic oversight falling on emperors’ official representatives and an educated gentry, many of whom were students and masters of Feng Shui. The second half of the nineteenth century to the modern day has been the main focus in this book. The 1840s brought, indirectly, a significant moment for Feng Shui as cultural praxis. Following the Opium War, the island of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain, beginning a period of development that took the territory on a different trajectory to the rest of China. But in China itself, the foothold being gained by foreign powers was a source of national humiliation and a prompt for political and

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economic change. Guangdong became home to a radical reform movement, which eventually destabilised the Qing dynasty and accelerated its demise. During the twentieth century, the province was at the forefront of continued political strife, which ended with the communist victory over the nationalists in 1949. Hong Kong, meanwhile, was settling into its life as a British colony—with the territory having been expanded through treaty in 1898. By the middle of the century, China was developing a Soviet-style command economy whilst Hong Kong was embracing freemarket capitalism. Roll forward to the 1960s and whilst Hong Kong was riding the first waves of global economic recovery, Guangdong was confronting the failure of the Great Leap Forward, blaming its economic stagnation on counter-revolutionary elements and backward thinking. Feng Shui in Hong Kong was a celebration of independent Chinese culture, a source of identity and of continuing good fortune. But in Guangdong, it was a link to a superstitious and imperial past, to be eliminated rather than celebrated. Taken together, the 1960s and 1970s were an important period in both case studies. Hong Kong’s expansion—across the Kowloon peninsula and into the New Territories—went into overdrive. And Guangdong saw light at the end of the tunnel that was the Cultural Revolution. The development of new towns in the New Territories brought Feng Shui to the fore during a period of modern urban development. It revealed important features of Feng Shui in Hong Kong and exposed continuing attachment to custom and social praxis. It also showed how more traditional, absolute, forms of geomancy had continued to shape development during the period of British rule and how these had been adapted by the migrant population on the island, many of whom had fled the turmoil in neighbouring Guangdong. This was a period in which new commercial development demonstrably engaged with Feng Shui— for reasons explored in Chapter 4. Guangdong, for its part, found itself part of a new China, ready to open up to the world and embrace significant reform under Deng Xiaoping. The Chinese economic miracle was about to begin, centred on modernisation, rapid urbanisation and state-led property development that would become increasingly commercialised. That development was given some attention in Chapter 3. In both cases, the questions were these: what role would Feng Shui play, and be allowed to play, in this period of rapid growth and urban change? To what extent would capital embrace Feng Shui for the purpose of creating and extracting value through property development?

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Evidence of a ‘conquest of space’, implicating Feng Shui, was difficult to detect in Guangdong. The Cultural Revolution had sought to suppress many of the ideas of the past and although these had remained in general circulation, their potency was diminished. Likewise, the scientific rationality of the late nineteenth century reform movement had become more important as the twentieth century unfolded, so although cultural attachment to Feng Shui was preserved, it was seldom discussed in official circles or assigned status in academia. But our research revealed a readiness amongst public officials to accept the realities of their decisionmaking environment, to support local custom during their oversight of urban transformation and so forestall conflicts arising from cultural attachment. More generally, a Feng Shui industry has grown up in Guangdong that connects downwards to domestic space and upwards to commercial property development. Guangdong is regarded as a bastion of Feng Shui belief in China, with ‘nine out of ten’ developers seeking the advice of Feng Shui masters when taking forward new projects. Visible markers of that belief in the construction industry are ubiquitous, from ribbons on cranes to auspicious objects buried ahead of ground-breaking ceremonies. Developers pay significant sums of money to masters for their advice and, until very recently, used Feng Shui as a prominent marketing tool for their new commercial and residential projects. But the power of Feng Shui in China is illustrated not by the outward actions of developers but rather the decisions of the courts, which have been quick to counter ‘superstition’ by finding against masters who criticise buildings on grounds of their geomancy. Since 2016, development companies have been unable to use Feng Shui in their marketing and government has rowed back from indications in the early 2000s that it might approve the accreditation of courses on architectural Feng Shui. These moves— protecting developers from criticism whilst preventing them from openly using Feng Shui to boost their profits—speak to the retained importance of Feng Shui in society at large and its implications for property development. It is clear that society and developers take Feng Shui seriously; that it is important in the creation of value through land development; and that government sees it as a double-edged sword, creating but also threatening value. Rather than allowing companies and masters to wield influence on value through the use and interpretation of Feng Shui, it has elected to remove this uncertainty in the development process, by effectively outlawing it. But that action itself illustrates the significance of

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Feng Shui in commercial development and, ‘beneath the radar’, developers continue to respect custom and thereby ensure that rental values are not jeopardised, by either bad Feng Shui or by social media chatter. Research in Hong Kong encountered a greater readiness to reflect on the importance of Feng Shui in the development process. ‘Getting the Feng Shui wrong’ was seen as a development risk like any other, and one that can be countered by the right advice and by proper planning. Prior studies in the territory have linked development value directly to good Feng Shui and the practice of advertising a building’s credentials in this respect have never been the subject of court action. It was noted that property markets are contoured by critical relationships between producers and customers: if customers believe in a particular way of doing things then producers must either respond or go out of business. They can of course try to shape demand, taking it in a new direction, but in the case of real estate companies in Hong Kong, it was thought that they are led by people who share a strong cultural root with their clients. But the operation of international companies in the territory, even those led by foreign nationals, does not diminish attention paid to Feng Shui. The role of Feng Shui in ‘adding value’ to projects is most clearly demonstrated during market down turns: it is during those periods that companies will really push good geomancy, competing on quality rather than price. Similarly, attention to the urban scale in which commercial projects are situated implicates regulators in this process of value extraction. There is a significantly greater volume of grey and academic literature devoted to the modern use of Feng Shui in Hong Kong than in mainland China, largely because technical and scientific Feng Shui has been a topic of research interest, with many Hong Kong-based researchers working in this field. One of the outcomes of that academic focus is more open discussion of how geomancy influences urban space, and the drawing of attention to myths and misconceptions. One common myth is that buildings with holes facilitate the flow of qi from Hong Kong’s mountains to the sea. The inaccuracy of that claim is less important here than the fact that Hong Kong is viewed as a city shaped by traditional cosmologies, with local people, international media and commentators from around the world constantly seeking meaning from all aspects of its built form. The reality, however, is that from the period of Hong Kong’s accelerated growth and expansion into its ‘rural hinterland’ of the New Territories in the 1960s, development has needed to navigate cultural sensitivities.

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New towns had the potential to cause significant disruption to traditional landscapes, replacing villages that long predated British rule with new high-rise development that fundamentally altered geomantic relationships. But the British, and the local planning teams they appointed, showed a willingness to work with communities, with colonial officials choosing to respect what they are unlikely to have fully understood. Attachment to Feng Shui was viewed as cultural leaning, and that attitude created a context in which there can be relatively open consideration of Feng Shui, which has survived into post-handover Hong Kong. Today, there is free discussion of the merits, or otherwise, of new buildings and spaces. Money is spent on correcting bad Feng Shui and Hong Kong’s masters operate in a generally unrestricted environment, although official recognition on the part of governmental bodies is cautious. Guangdong and Hong Kong share a common history and a modern attachment to Feng Shui. It is likely that their populations share similar views on this topic and do many of the same things to improve their living environments. Their expectations of the public realm and general respect of traditional ideas is also likely to be broadly aligned. However, the reality of ‘one country, two systems’ means some divergence in how regulators and commercial interests operate. Our research points to a more silent respect for Feng Shui on the mainland. There has of course been a 40-year debate on the crossover between traditional architecture and Feng Shui and efforts to extract science from superstition culminated, in the early 2000s, in Beijing almost sanctioning the running of accredited courses dealing with Feng Shui. But government has since rowed back from that position and retrenched in the view that superstition and development are incompatible. Hence, the extent to which cultural praxis shapes land development is not entirely clear, but it will play a substantial role. There is far more fanfare associated with Feng Shui in Hong Kong and many more examples of how it has affected development outcomes, from stories of international banks battling for qi to buildings being retrofitted, at substantial cost, to counter design flaws. The role of Feng Shui in the generation of rent is not hidden: it is rather an open reality of the Hong Kong property market. We return, therefore, to our central transition: the domination of space for abstract purpose. Our conclusion in the Guangdong chapter was that any evidence of rent seeking through improved Feng Shui is consistent with a role long-assigned traditional geomancy. Whether as a source of stability for emperors or rent for capitalists, Feng Shui provides a means

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of abstract control. Thinking on the domination of space today tends to emphasise the control exerted by capital and the way that control can displace populations, prioritising exchange over use value. This is a theme that unites many areas of urban studies. The desire to park and grow capital through exchange processes in the built environment causes the displacement of people and the disruption of their lives: places that should be absolute, meeting needs, become abstract, serving capital. But there is no simple binary between spaces: rather processes coexist, with processes of domination contouring land rents and driving some social exclusions. The conclusion for Hong Kong seemed rather clearer. The territory’s history as a discrete entity is relatively short. Seen in isolation, Feng Shui transitioned as the divination practices of fishing communities to the commercial practices of real estate development, which has transformed the territory over the last 50 years. Yet, looking more broadly across the cases, whether silent or overt, Feng Shui is now implicated in the creation of exchange value by virtue of the continuity between the expectations of customers and commercial practices in response to those expectations.

5.2

Authenticity---Concluding Remarks

The craving for authenticity is widespread, above all in heritage conservation. It denotes the true as opposed to the false, the real rather than the fake, the original, not the copy, the honest against the corrupt, the sacred instead of the profane. These virtues persuade us to treat authenticity as an absolute value, eternal and unshakable. Yet authenticity is, in fact, in continual flux, its defining criteria subject to ceaseless change. (Lowenthal, 1999, 5)

During the millennia of its known existence, Feng Shui has never been static: rather it evolved to meet different needs, starting from those of basic human settlement and evolving into the need to govern, foster stability, and claim legitimacy. In many respects, the story of Feng Shui is also the story of Chinese civilisation and, more generally, the story of any social praxis that survives the toing and froing of human history and societal change. One of the reasons why we might question the ‘authenticity’ of contemporary forms of Feng Shui is that this label—wind and water—is applied retrospectively to many stages of cosmological practice

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and divination, prehistoric, ancient and recent. But Feng Shui today, or even 500 years ago, is patently not the same as that practised 3000 years ago; rather, Feng Shui is ‘an ongoing creation, an agglomerative tradition’ (Bruun, 2017, 726). It is arguably unfair therefore to judge Feng Shui through the lens of authenticity because to talk of ‘Feng Shui’ is to talk of many different things, united only by the sense of environmental and experiential awareness, which is anyway bound to change: indeed ‘Feng Shui tends to mean different things in different societies and to different people’ (ibid., 726). And yet, because of core principles, Feng Shui today shares features with ancient practice and our concern with authenticity— that most ‘fragile and evanescent’ concept (Lowenthal, 1999, 5)—is tied to our consideration of Feng Shui as a guide for domesticating and giving meaning to space versus its role in domination. In essence, our destination has always been to consider whether a facsimile of genuine Feng Shui, lacking authenticity, is instrumentalised to dominate space and whether, therefore, meaning is lost. Stasis is certainly not a condition of authenticity. And the authenticity of any form of Feng Shui does not hinge on undisputed origin. It was noted earlier in this book that divination practices are likely to have had many local roots, taking shape in different ways in different places. Indeed, similar practices can be observed around the world and their only common root, as noted above, is in the innate human desire to make sense of the world. We can only start to talk of an ‘original’ once a practice is codified and principles are agreed. At that point something exists that can be compared at different times and its development tracked, possibly through the examination of meaningful objects associated with that practice. Still, our consideration is with a practice rather than an artefact —with a constructive rather than an objective authenticity—and practice is, in its nature, fluid and changeable. All of this makes authenticity a very difficult concept to tie down. Originality, when applied to material things, is easier to deal with: the provenance of a painting can be established through science and buildings are relatively easy to date; linking them to a time and place is a straightforward undertaking. But originality—or ‘original form’—differs from authenticity, which ‘inheres in processes of change, mutabilities of time and history, continuities enlivened as much by alteration as by persistence’ (ibid., 9). Applied to the field of heritage conservation, Lowenthal argued that attempts to freeze those mutabilities—to engage in conservation that artificially seeks to recreate a past state—effectively ends authenticity, breaking the chain

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of continuity. That logic appears to have particular resonance in East Asia, where the material is relegated behind tradition: The East Asian notion of authenticity as a fluid, multi-dimensional concept relies on an emphasis on craft, design and spiritual and cosmological traditions over original material. (Stubbs and Thomson, 2016, 35)

That relegation is illustrated in Japan where the Ise Grand Shrine comprises several wooden structures that are ritually deconstructed and reconstructed every twenty years. This has happened for 1,400 years. Any perception of authenticity relates to practice rather than materials, with that authenticity inhering in process. Indeed, cosmological tradition is imbued with authenticity, as much as any building or artefact, or perhaps more so given that material things are necessarily snapshots of longer processes of change whilst traditions continue to live, shape thought and guide human consciousness. Feng Shui is a continuity of thinking with obscure origin and various end states, which will further evolve in the future. It is easy to confuse originality with authenticity. We have, in this book, frequently referred to Feng Shui’s rootedness in the observation of nature. But we have also noted its evolution over time and its use in the development and delivery of social order. Its use as a social praxis has never been incompatible with its role in government or indeed its contemporary use, often in shorthand forms, in the shaping and promotion of land development. As the emperors elevated the status of Feng Shui, from social to spatial praxis, tying it to contemporary need, the real estate industry today is arguably carrying forward Feng Shui on the next stage of its journey, expanding its influence well beyond East Asia. Removal from its founding context, by commercial interests today and by the Chinese diaspora over the last 200 years, in no way diminishes the authenticity of modern Feng Shui. At its root lies the good sense of human–nature relationships, perhaps making it more relevant now than at any previous time in human history.

References Beauregard, R. A. (1994). Capital Switching and the Built Environment: United States, 1970–89. Environment and Planning A, 26, 715–732. Bruun, O. (2017). Comments on Paper by Manuela Madeddu and Xiaoqin Zhang. Journal of Urban Design, 22(6), 726–728.

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Harvey, D. (1978). The Urban Process Under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2(1–3), 101– 131. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Lowenthal, D. (1999). Authenticity: Rock of Faith or Quicksand Quagmire? Conservation: The Getty Conservation Institute Newsletter, 14(3), 5–8. Molotch, H. (1993). The Space of Lefebvre. Theory and Society, 22(6), 887–895. Stanek, L. (2011). Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stubbs, J. H., & Thomson, R. G. (2016). Architectural Conservation in Asia: National Experiences and Practice. London: Taylor & Francis.

Index

A Abercrombie, P., 16 absolute and abstract space, 19–23, 54, 133, 139 modernization of China and, 23–28 agora, 16 Ali, J.R., 104, 105 Almanac, Chinese, 111, 113 ancestor worship, 4, 65, 66, 120 Anderson, E.N., 105 Anderson, M., 105 appropriation, space as, 19–20 Archer, J., 18 architects Guangdong Province, 81–83 Hong Kong, 113 architectural Feng Shui Guangdong Province, 79–83 Hong Kong, 113 astronomical phenomena, 5 Athens, 16 authenticity of Feng Shui, 23, 26–27, 54–55, 131–133, 146–148

B bagua concept, 15 Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong, 114, 115, 122, 125–126 banks, 91, 114, 115, 122, 125–126 Basic Law, Hong Kong, 40 Beauregard, R.A., 22, 139 Beijing, 8, 10, 12–13, 80 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, 28 Bourdieu, P., 17, 55 Bourgeois Revolutionary Party Alliance, 42 Bramble, C., 10 British colonialism in Hong Kong, 37–40, 46–51, 103, 107–108 Bruun, O., 3–7, 11–12, 23, 25–27, 108, 110, 111, 118, 120, 122, 125, 147 Bryman, A., 56 Buddhism, 67 built environment professionals Guangdong Province, 79–81, 89 Hong Kong, 113 Burgess, R.G., 56

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Madeddu and X. Zhang, Feng Shui and the City, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0847-6

151

152

INDEX

burial sites, 4, 65, 66, 91–92, 106, 120 business clients, Hong Kong, 113–115

C capitalism ‘conquest of space’, 20–21 secondary circuit of capital, 21–22 Cartier, C., 28, 93 CCP. See Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cemeteries, 91–92. See also burial sites Central Government Offices (CGO), Hong Kong, 117, 123 Chan, H.T., 111–112, 118, 131, 132 Chang’an (Xi’an), 10, 12 China Merchants Bank (CMB), 91 Chinese Almanac, 111, 113 Chinese Architectural and Cultural Centre (CACC), 79 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 23, 28, 36, 38, 40, 42, 77, 79, 92 ‘Chinese Construction, Feng Shui Culture and Healthy Land Development’ conference, 79–80 Chiu, R., 50–52 Citibank headquarters, Hong Kong, 125–126 Coggins, C., 4, 14, 25–26, 92 Coleman, N., 22 colonnades, 45 colours of buildings, 9, 86 commercial spaces of Feng Shui Guangdong Province, 88–91 Hong Kong, 120–127 communist government. See Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Compass School, 5, 7, 8, 64 Confucianism, 4, 6, 9, 13–14 Coonan, C., 86, 87 courtyard houses, 8, 26, 86

cultural praxis, place/landscape as, 15–19, 54 Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976), 39, 77, 94

D Dan, Z., 125 Daoism, 3–4, 70, 76 decorative objects, domestic, 10, 26, 76, 119 Deng Xiaoping, 40, 77 department stores, 85 Disneyland, Hong Kong, 125 divination practices, 3–4, 6, 70 domestic and private spaces of Feng Shui, 7–10 Guangdong Province, 86–88 Hong Kong, 118–120 transition from absolute to abstract space, 26 See also houses domination, spaces for, 19, 20 doors, 9–10, 87, 126 Doubletree by Hilton, 91 dragon gates, 122–125

E Eastern Jin Dynasty (317 to 420 AD), 3 Eight Trigram villages, 14–15 Eitel, E.J., 3, 108 Emmons, C.F., 120 entrance gates, 8, 86, 87 escalators, 85

F Feng Shui authenticity of, 22–23, 26–27, 54–55, 131–133, 146–148 defined, 3

INDEX

origins and development of, 3–6 transition of, 23–28, 93–95, 139–146 Feng Shui forests, 14, 23, 25, 66, 92, 105, 107, 128, 130 Feng Shui masters, 5, 27 Guangdong Province, 67, 72, 74, 78, 81–85, 89–91, 95 Hong Kong, 113–118, 120–127, 129 Feng Shui pagodas, 72–73, 79, 107 Feuchwang, S., 26 financialisation of space, 21, 139 Florence, 17 forests, Feng Shui, 14, 23, 25, 66, 92, 105, 107, 128, 130 Form School, 5, 7, 8, 64, 103 Foster, Norman, 125 Four Season Hotel Guangzhou, 91 Fung, F.W.Y., 116 Fuyueling cemetery, Maoming, 92

G Gaoming County, 72 gardens, private, 10 Gaubatz, P., 14 global form of Feng Shui, 26, 119 government regulators, Hong Kong, 115–117, 127–131 grave sites, 8, 65, 66, 91–92, 106, 119–120 Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962), 77 Greece, ancient, 16 Griffiths, A., 86 Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, 43, 51–52 Guangdong Province, 37, 63–95 architects, 81–83 built environment professionals, 79–81, 89

153

commercial space of Feng Shui, 88–91 contemporary use and attitudes towards feng shui, 76–85 development over last 200 years, 41–46, 52 domestic space of Feng Shui, 86–88 early development and influence of Feng Shui, 65–68 Feng Shui masters, 67, 72, 74, 78, 81–85, 89–91, 95 Feng Shui’s transition, 93–95, 139–146 individual and community attitudes towards Feng Shui, 75–79 local gentry and government, 71–74 past use and attitudes towards Feng Shui, 69–76 planning officials, 79–81, 89 public space of Feng Shui, 91–93 real estate developers, 83–85, 88–91 royal authority, 70 social demand for Feng Shui, 89–95 Guangzhou, 12, 38, 42–43, 45, 64, 68, 86. See also Panyu Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center (HEMC), 93 Guangzhou Museum, 70 Guanyin Statue, Hong Kong, 130 H habitus , 17–18, 55 Haijin policy, 64 Hakka people, 75–76, 104 Hall, P., 16 Hangzhou, 10, 14–15 Han Shu (Book of Han), 65 Han Wudi, Emperor, 66 Harvey, D., 21, 139 Hayes, J., 48, 50, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110–111 health benefits, 87

154

INDEX

Heidegger, M., 18 Henderson Land Development, 121 Higher Education Mega Center (HEMC), Guangzhou, 93 Hill, R.D., 104, 105 Ho, P., 50, 108 holed buildings, 122–125 Hong Kong, 7, 23, 27–28, 101–133 architects, 113 authenticity, 131–133 British colonialism, 37–40, 46–51, 103, 107–108 built environment professionals, 113 business clients, 113–115 commercial space of Feng Shui, 120–127 contemporary use and attitudes towards feng shui, 110–117 development over last 200 years, 46–53 domestic space of Feng Shui, 118–120 early development and influence of Feng Shui, 103–106 Feng Shui masters, 113–118, 120–129 Feng Shui’s transition, 139–146 government regulators, 115–117, 127–131 history of separation from mainland, 37–41 holed buildings, 122–125 individual and community attitudes towards Feng Shui, 108–112 ‘one country, two systems’ principle, 40 past use and attitudes towards Feng Shui, 107–110 planning officials, 113 population, 49 real estate developers, 113–115, 120–127

urban and public space of Feng Shui, 127–131 Hong Kong Disneyland, 125 Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, 116 Hongwu Emperor, 70 Hopewell Centre, Hong Kong, 126 hotels, 91, 126, 128 houses colours, 9, 86 courtyard houses, 8, 26, 86 decorative objects, 10, 26, 76, 119 doors, 9, 87–89 entrance gates, 8, 86, 87 gardens, 9–10 Guangdong Province, 66, 67, 75–76 Hong Kong, 118–120 internal layout, 9 kitchens, 8–9, 87 materials, 9 orientation and siting, 7, 8, 66, 86 size, 9 skywell houses, 8, 67 urban, 7–10, 26 village, 7, 75–76, 106 weiwu (walled houses), 75–76 See also domestic and private spaces of Feng Shui HSBC headquarters, Hong Kong, 114, 125–126 Huangpu Military Academy, 42 Huidong County, 81, 92 Huizong, Emperor, 12 hukou (urban residence permits), 24 Huo family, 74

I individual and community attitudes towards Feng Shui Guangdong Province, 74–79

INDEX

Hong Kong, 108–112 ink-stones, 74 interior design, 82, 119, 126 International Feng Shui Association, 114, 123–124 Ip, H.F., 105, 106 Ise Grand Shrine, Japan, 148

J Japan, 148 Jinyang, 12 Jones, P., 17

K Kaifeng, 10, 12 Kan Zhai, 78, 83, 95 Keegan, M., 103, 114, 123 kitchens, 8–9, 87 Knapp, R., 6, 7, 9, 12, 15 Kwai Chung, Hong Kong, 129–130

L landscape as cultural praxis, 15–18, 54 Lands Department, Hong Kong, 116–117 Lau, R., 41 Lefebvre, H., 16, 18, 19, 22, 54, 139 Licha Village, 14–15 Lo, A., 124 local gentry and government, Guangdong Province, 71 location. See orientation and siting Logan, J.R., 22 Loh, C., 39 Lowenthal, D., 132–133, 146, 147 Lui, T., 50–52 Lung, P.Y.D., 49 Luoyang, 10

155

M Madeddu, M., 131 Mak, M.Y., 11, 122 Mandarin Hotel, Hong Kong, 128 Maoming, 92 Mao Zedong, 23, 38, 39, 77 Marafa, L., 103, 105 Maritime Silk Road, 64, 66 Massey, D., 18 masters. See Feng Shui masters materials, houses, 9 medieval cities, 16–17 Mei Tung Housing Estate, Hong Kong, 128–129, 130 Merrifield, A., 21 Meyer, J.F., 10 migration, rural to urban, 24, 25–26 Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644 AD), 6, 12–13, 46, 64, 68, 70, 72 Ming Li, 78 mining, 74 Minor, J., 4, 14, 25 Molotch, H.L., 18–22 Munn, C., 38–39

N Nam Pin Wai Village, 105 Nanhai Jichanglong Silk Reeling Factory, 41–42 Nanjing, 10, 12 Nanyue Kingdom, 65–66, 70 nature observation and interpretation of, 4–5 worship of, 4 Needham, J., 6 Ngo, T.W., 39

O Old Book of Tang , 67

156

INDEX

‘one country, two systems’ principle, Hong Kong, 39–40 O-office Architects, 86 Opium War, 37–38, 41, 46 orientation and siting burial sites, 4, 65, 66, 91–92, 106 cities, 10–12, 103 houses, 7–8, 66, 86 temples, 67 villages, 104

P pagodas, Feng Shui, 72–73, 79, 107 Painter, J., 17 Panyu, 65–66. See also Guangzhou Paton, M.J., 103 Pei, I.M., 125 Piazzoni, M.F., 132 place as cultural praxis, 15, 54 planning officials Guangdong Province, 79, 89 Hong Kong, 112–113 poleis , 16 political economy of land and urban development, 21 Potter, J.M., 106, 128 property developers, 26–27 Guangdong Province, 83, 88 Hong Kong, 113, 120 protests, Hong Kong, 40 public spaces. See urban and public spaces of Feng Shui

Q Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912 AD), 5, 37–38, 41–43, 46, 64, 65, 68, 74 Qin Shi Huang, Emperor, 64, 65 qi (vital force), 4, 8, 25 Quanzhou, 70

R real estate developers, 26–27 Guangdong Province, 83–85, 88–91 Hong Kong, 113–115, 120 Reform Movement, 42 regulators, Hong Kong, 115–117, 127–131 Renaissance towns, 16–17 Repulse Bay holed building, 122–124 research fieldwork and analysis, 57–59 strategy, 55–57 Revive China Society, 42 Revolutionary Nationalist Government, 42 Revolutionary War, 42 Rossabi, M., 37, 38, 40–41 royal authority, Guangdong Province, 70 rural areas and villages, 14, 23–25 Eight Trigram villages, 14–15 Feng Shui forests, 14, 23, 25, 66, 92, 105, 107, 128, 130 Guangdong Province, 66, 74, 79 Hong Kong, 104, 107 houses, 7, 75–76, 105–106 village layouts, 7, 14–15, 105–106 village orientation and siting, 104–105 rural to urban migration, 24, 25–26

S Sang, L.W., 39 scales of Feng Shui, 53. See also commercial spaces of Feng Shui; domestic and private spaces of Feng Shui; urban and public spaces of Feng Shui secondary circuit of capital, 21 sense of place, 17

INDEX

Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1046 BC), 4–7 Sharr, A., 18 Shenzhen, 43, 64, 86–91, 93 Singapore, 23 siting. See orientation and siting Situ, S., 68 Six Dynasties (222 to 589 AD), 66 Skocpol, T., 71 skywell houses, 8, 67 So, A.T., 122 social class, 9 social demand for Feng Shui, 89, 115 social media, 90, 95 Song Dynasty (960 to 1279 AD), 6, 12, 67–68, 104 Special Economic Zones, 43, 64 Stanek, L., 20 Steinhardt, N.S., 10, 12 Stubbs, J.H., 148 Sun Yat-sen, 42 T Tai Fu Tai Mansion, Hong Kong, 106 Taiping Rebellion, 41 Taiwan, 23 Tam, W.L., 66, 92 Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 AD), 6, 67 temples, 67, 79, 81, 128, 130 Thomson, R.G., 148 Tin Hau Temple, Hong Kong, 128 transition from absolute to abstract space, 19, 54, 132–133, 139 modernization of China and, 23 transition of Feng Shui, 23, 93, 139 Treaty of Nanking, 37–38, 46 Tsz Shan Monastery, Hong Kong, 130 U Umbrella Movement, 40

157

urban and public spaces of Feng Shui, 10 Guangdong Province, 91 Hong Kong, 127 transition from absolute to abstract space, 23 urban houses, 7–10, 26 urban housing market, 26–27 urbanisation, China, 24 urban residence permits (hukou), 24 urban–rural ‘integration plans’, 24

V villages. See rural areas and villages

W Wang, Y., 40 Wei, L., 42 weiwu (walled houses), 75–76 Wen Chang Temple, Huidong County, 81 Wen Di, Emperor, 12 Wesley-Smith, P., 103, 106 Westernisation of Feng Shui, 26, 119 West Han Dynasty (202 to 9 AD), 6 Wright, D.C., 38–40 Wu culture, 76 Wu, F., 23, 24 Wu, J., 45, 74 Wu, W., 13–14 Wycherley, R.R., 16

X Xi’an (Chang’an), 10, 12 Xiaoguwei Island, 92–93 Xingzhonghui, 42 Xiqi Village, 67 Xu, G., 68 Xu, P., 7–8

158

INDEX

Y Yanzao Village, 92 Yi Jing (The Book of Changes), 6, 78 Yoon, H.K., 3, 10 Yuan Dynasty (1279 to 1368 AD), 67–68 Yuwei, H., 91 Z Zang Shu (The Book of Burial), 3, 122

Zhang, X., 131 Zhao Kuangyin, Emperor, 12 Zhaoqing, 74 Zhong, H., 45, 74 Zhongshan, 64 Zhou Dynasty (1046 to 256 BC), 4, 9 Zhou li (Rites of Zhou), 9, 11 Zhuge Village, 14–15 Zhu Yuanzhang, Emperor, 70