Fri Aug 15 – Feng Shui and more

We learned a lot about “feng shui” (I know this isn’t the correct spelling). The whole tour and many of the explanations behind the Summer Palace seemed to revolve a lot around this concept – with “feng” meaning wind and “shui” meaning “water”. The concept being of course the need to have balance between different elements in Chinese life. She explained that much of the symbolism behind the buildings and statues and beliefs all stemmed from the need in Chinese culture to have balance in life. We learned about how so many of the Chinese animal statues all had meanings – royalty, success, prosperity, wealth, and happiness. We learned about lucky and unlucky numbers. According to her, 9 is a great number because it is the symbol of royalty. 5 is a great number because it is halfway between 1 and 5, and therefore provides great feng shui. 6 and 8 are also good numbers. 4 is a really bad number because it is out of balance between 1 and 9. According to her, no one will buy a car or want a phone number ending in 4 because It will be unlucky. Before buying an apartment or house, Chinese buyers will try to find out the history of the property to find out if it has good feng shui or not. Interestingly, if a property is located near a temple or hospital, this is bad. She explained this is bad because they associated going to a hospital or temple with bad things – you only go to a temple or hospital when something bad happens and you need help. Therefore living close would be akin to bad luck. We were also shown this particular kind of “rock” that evidently you could only get from the lake close to this summer palace. Only the royalty were allowed to have this rock. If commoners had this rock, they could be killed. Emily and I looked closely at this rock – and it basically looked like a rock. I asked the tour guide how anyone could tell this type of rock – and she assured me that any Chinese would know the difference between normal rock and this rock…obviously Emily and I were not meant to be Chinese, because it still looked like a normal type of rock to us.