First it was Chinese cooking, then Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Next came martial arts, followed by tai chi and qi gong. And now feng shui is making meaningful inroads into Western culture. It’s what Howard Choy, president of the Feng Shui Society of Australia, calls the ‘fifth wave’ of traditional Chinese culture to gain popularity in the West.
Like the four waves before it, Choy argues, feng shui is starting to transcend ‘fad’ status in the West to become accepted in the mainstream. And he points to the many feng shui practitioners and consultants now found throughout the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
In 2003, American comedian-illusionists Penn and Teller took a poke at feng shui on their TV series Bullshit! They called in three of those feng shui experts to separately work their magic on the same house. The advice and results varied wildly, and even contradictory. Although the experiment gave the famous duo ample ammo for skepticism and irreverence, the very fact they paid heed to the Chinese art proved how far it had pervaded Western society.
Basically, feng shui can be defined as the creation of harmony between heaven, earth and humans. Practitioners say feng shui is about finding balance – environmentally and internally – and meeting human need. It draws on astrology, thousands of years of careful observation and energy manipulation to arrange objects in space for optimum harmony. “A lot of people misunderstand feng shui,” says Choy. “They think we can use the technicality of feng shui to predict the future.” The most important thing, he says, is that it addresses human need, especially the need to survive and be protected from the elements and predators. Feng shui helps man understand his true relationship with nature. Though, more mundanely, some believe it can also help with anything from improving one’s love life to increasing wealth.
Choy’s comments came during his presentation to the 2nd International Conference on Scientific Feng Shui and Built Environment at the City of University of Hong Kong in early October. Countries represented included the United States, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Australia, Italy, and Canada – clearly indicating feng shui’s influence in the West. The 100-or-so delegates discussed feng shui’s role in the Turin Winter Olympics and compared the art to the Western idea of ‘green design’, among many other things. But perhaps most interesting was the guest of honour and keynote speaker – not an old feng shui master from the heart of China or even a celebrity practitioner from Hong Kong, but a 70-year-old Englishman with a ruddy complexion, bristling white hair and a plummy accent. His name is Derek Walters.
While many Westerners may have only recently come to grips with feng shui, Walters’ interest spans 30 years and he is considered an authority. His reputation has something to do with the two earthquakes he predicted. In 1989, he was asked by a Hong Kong television station for his advice for the year ahead. Walters, noting it was a ‘Snake-Earth year’ – a particularly ominous sign for earthquakes, according to Chinese astrology and feng shui – said it wasn’t a good time to be living in the San Andreas region in California. Shortly afterwards, San Francisco was struck by a 7.1 magnitude quake that killed 62 people and left more than 12,000 homeless.
Ten years later, Walters was approached about the possible consequences of a forthcoming solar eclipse. Citing Chinese astrology, the eclipse signified the destruction of bridges, he said. Six days after the eclipse, a massive earthquake rocked Istanbul, the ‘bridge’ between Europe and Asia, killing 17,000 people and leaving 200,000 homeless. Though Walters already had a reputation in feng shui circles because of his books, the predictions did nothing to dampen his profile. In his speech to the conference, he apologetically admitted, “I have to say thank you very much [to those cities], because without that I wouldn’t be standing here.”
Walters came to his predictions through a series of equations to track the eclipse and its correspondence to certain constellations – but he interpreted the constellations according to ancient Chinese astrology and feng shui. That fusion of the technical and subjective is part of what first attracted to him to the centuries-old art. An accomplished musician – he once conducted his own symphony in London’s Festival Hall – Walters had just finished work on an encyclopedia of music. He was looking for a new challenge. Feng shui seemed a good option – like music, it combined scientific principles with inner heart, and he already had an interest in astrology and Chinese culture.
When he started writing about it in the mid ’80s, feng shui was virtually unheard of in the West, he says. “Then it seemed the word got round, and more and more people began to take up the latest ‘craze’, although my first customers were actually Chinese!” Walters says a proliferation of entrepreneurial feng shui ‘experts’ skilled in self-promotion meant the fashion soon over-reached itself and burned out. However, he stresses that those who studied authoritative feng shui still thrive. “So in the West, the charlatans have had their day.” Well, Penn and Teller might have something to say about that.
In the meantime, he seems happy with his choice to move into the field. Six years ago he bought a house in England using feng shui principles, and since then its value has increased four-fold. If that’s not just astute timing, then you’d have to say it must be very good feng shui. |
Derek Walters, expert and author, believes feng shui is grounded in scientific principles but also relies on a certain degree of interpretation. He thinks the spiritual element is indispensable. “I proved over and over again that plans of a building are never enough,” he offers by way of example. “The buildings will always work out different, because of the human aspect.” He also compares feng shui to music – it has 
Anna Markovic, a doctoral student in social geography at Hungary’s University of Szegad, says the question depends on what science really is. “If science is something we can prove materially – by things you can touch – then Feng Shui is not a science.” But then again, she says, by the same criterion, psychology wouldn’t be considered a science either.
Wei Dong from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States thinks feng shui should be regarded as a cultural phenomenon that contributes to a wider cultural understanding. “Is there an absolute need to give feng shui a scientific formula?” He suggests it is a social or ‘soft’ science: “It can’t be as concrete as science.”
