fengshui, also known as chinese geomancy, is largely known today in the west as a kind of pseudoscience, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s actually a really practical philosophy when it comes to interior design, architecture, and even urban planning, which is why it’s been put to practice for thousands of years, and is still used today, to varying degrees. this is something you can pick up on if you really break down a lot of the advice given in fengshui
some examples of good fengshui are like: 1. don’t have your bathroom facing your kitchen (because it smells bad and is unsanitary) 2. don’t have a door opening directly to a flight of stairs (because it’s easy to fall down and get injured) 3. don’t put a mirror in the doorway (you’ll get spooked) 4. if your house is located at a Y-shaped intersection, put a large rock in front of your property (so a speeding car doesn’t demolish your house)
as you probably noticed, all of them are completely practical advice for designing a house that’s just comfortable to live in. it’s entirely functional architecture, and it’s really noticeable when a house or apartment has bad fengshui because they’ll be miserable to live in, whether they’re too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, dont’ get enough natural light or air circulation, if it’s just relaly poorly soundproofed, really easy to get injured in, or if it just doesn’t work with the landscape around the property
but of course, it doesn’t just stop at the level of individual houses, it also extends to planning entire cities on a large scale. a famous example would be chang’an (now known as xi’an), which directly inspired the urban planning of kyoto in japan
as you’ll probably notice, the city is extremely grid-like, and things are positioned in very specific spots, like the markets being located along the x-axis on the east and west in order to best facilitate trade. the palace is located in the north with its back against the north so that during the winter, the large structure can break the cold northern winds. the main road goes down the middle of the city and opens up to the southern gate so that in the summer, the cool breeze from the south can easily enter the city and disperse heat. it’s for reasons like these that cardinal directions (north, south, east, west, center) play such a huge role in fengshui - they’re an essential part of working with the landscape and climate in order to best build a house or plan a city
anyways, that being said, you’re probably wondering why, despite all of this, fengshui has the reputation it has today, and unfortunately there are reasons for this: 1. fengshui is communicated by its practitioners in mystical terms, with energies and elements and good fortune and whatnot. this is a really effective way at getting people who aren’t in the know to follow practical advice if they think improving their house is gonna give them good energy and good fortune (which it will, because they’ll physically feel better from living in a better environment), but this also gives fengshui an air of pseudoscientific mysticism 2. orientalism plays a huge part in how people in the west conceive of china, and for many centuries, european and american orientalists have pushed the idea of china being this ancient, mystical wonderland of sorts, and as a result, ideas like fengshui get translated into the west along those lines as a kind of mysticism, without people realizing that fengshui is ultimately a practical philosophy 3. western countries (america esp) has really strong pseudoscientific and anti-intellectual movements of their own, with antivax and spiritual healing and whatnot, and since most people don’t understand what fengshui is to begin with, it becomes really easy to lump it in with pseudoscience
but ultimately fengshui isn’t really any of that, it’s about designing spaces that are comfortable and healthy to live in. but i hope this clears things up!
This is really cool, thank you for sharing! Eould you happen to have any resourves on where people could go to look up other principles of fengshui?
ima be totally honest i have no clue, all of this has just been cultural knowledge and stuff i picked up on while studying japanese architecture. i would recommend researching via academic databases, as they tend to carry sources with better academic integrity. z-lib is always an option but i would be careful with finding sources on there, as, once again, orientalism heavily leads people to characterise the entire practice as just spiritualism rather than pragmatism because of the way fengshui ideas are communicated. ultimately searching online is gonna be tough because of how much bullshit people have made up about fengshui
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