Feng Shui: The Chinese View of the Environment

Author: Liu Peilin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-02-01
Features: Earlier, the term "feng shui" was closely associated with words like "superstition" and "divination." However, from today's perspective, feng shui is a unique cultural landscape of Chinese culture. Over thousands of years of civilized history, feng shui has been the symbol of the Chinese pursuit of an ideal environment. The theories of qi, yin, the Five Elements, the Bagua, and the concept of "harmony between heaven and humanity" in traditional Chinese philosophy have become the cultural soil from which feng shui emerged. Feng shui is a unique cultural landscape of Chinese culture. The theories of qi, yin, the Five Elements, the Bagua, and the concept of "harmony between heaven and humanity" in traditional Chinese philosophy have become the cultural soil from which feng shui emerged. Feng shui emphasizes the harmony between humans and nature, and its essence is the pursuit of an ideal living and development environment. The concept of auspicious and inauspicious in feng shui actually reflects an environmental view of ancient Chinese people. Chinese feng shui has not only influenced ancient cities, villages, residential areas, and burial grounds but also has deep roots in traditional Buddhism, Taoism, Confucian ethics, landscape architecture, and landscape poetry and painting. Indeed, feng shui is mixed with a lot of superstition, but the theme of pursuing an ideal living environment is eternal. It is precisely for this reason that contemporary Western society is so interested in Chinese feng shui. This is a work that comprehensively and systematically explores the formation, theoretical core, social manifestations, and cultural orientation of feng shui from a cultural perspective, taking the relationship between humans and nature as the starting point. This book is of reference value for research in fields such as cultural studies, history, geography, architecture, folklore, anthropology, and sociology. Excerpt: Chapter "The Earth as Mother": The Philosophical Premise of Feng Shui Since the birth of humanity, we have been inseparably linked with Mother Earth. Our food, clothing, shelter, and transportation all rely on the earth. Regardless of the past, present, or future, the earth will always be the spatial environment that sustains humanity. A large number of Neolithic settlement sites discovered from 6000 to 2000 BCE indicate that settlements chosen on slopes with water sources, or near river deltas and swamps, were the most common. This was true during both the Yangshao and Longshan periods. The reason is simple: settlements near water sources made production and daily life convenient; settlements built at river confluences facilitated transportation; and the valleys where settlements were located became channels for communication between different settlements. The fact that most of these settlements are now overlaid by modern cities shows that their site selection remains rational today. It appears that humans began actively choosing their living environments thousands of years ago. Accumulated experience over time can evolve into a discipline. However, for experience to rise to the level of a discipline, it needs the guidance of a methodology. The vibrant academic thoughts and outstanding philosophical theories that emerged during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods provided the possibility for such a need. Thus, starting from the Warring States period, a discipline of "environmental selection" guided by classical philosophy—feng shui—began to take shape. The concepts of yin and yang, as well as the related theories of qi and the organic theory of the earth, had a profound impact on the formation and development of feng shui in the future; while the idea of "the earth as mother" served as the direct basis for the formation of feng shui. Without understanding the philosophical origins of ancient Chinese feng shui thought, it is impossible to fully grasp the essence of ancient Chinese feng shui. I. The Origin of the "Yin-Yang" Concept and Its Influence on Feng Shui Without the guidance of the yin-yang theory, ancient Chinese feng shui thought and culture would not have emerged. The yin-yang concept can be traced back to the I Ching. The era in which the I Ching was compiled has been debated for a long time. However, based on many stories about the Shang and early Zhou periods cited in the I Ching's hexagram and line texts, it may have been a work from the early Western Zhou period. The I Ching itself does not mention the words "yin" and "yang," but it attempts to summarize various phenomena in nature and human society using two opposing principles ("—" and "—") and their arrangements.