Storm in a fishbowl

Well, I'm sorry I've gone beyond the 3,500-year mark. But it's just to show feng shui is not rooted in the fantasy world of one person with great imagination. It's in our cultural genes. Like it or not, it influences our daily decisions.

And at least part of it can indeed be explained by modern science. For example, houses sitting close to a curved road are deemed ill-omened because they gather dust from the traffic and a runaway vehicle may crash into them.

This is one of the examples given by Ma Wei, the Wuhan professor who wanted to shed some light on the relation between buildings and whatever outside forces there are that affect them.

I believe there is a logical and practical explanation to many of the feng shui practices. But once couched in esoteric terms, the science part is lost to metaphysics. And many practices become ritualized without leaving room for questioning. So, pushed to extremes, feng shui does smack of the mysterious and superstitious.

When I learn of feng shui masters charging exorbitant prices for their services to people like Donald Trump, it sounds like a scam by someone who knows how to pick a target. Yes, these people can afford to be swindled. But isn't it similar to some government agencies paying big money to get a television personality to deliver a "chicken-soup-for-the-soul" speech on guoxue? Sorry, I digress.

Personally, I do not believe in feng shui and tend to see it in aesthetic terms. If someone put up a mirror in front of their window, I see it as a visual chime, deflecting not qi but a dancing light. I wonder if the inventor of the mirror ball in the disco was inspired by feng shui. It certainly emits lots of beams of light going in all directions. But if they carry a negative force, shouldn't patrons wear special bad-qi-proof vests to keep their good fortune?

In the ongoing arms wrestling between science and Chinese-themed "pseudo-science", Fang Zhouzi is a towering figure. He says traditional Chinese medicine uses "psychological suggestions" to cure patients. "We should not believe something is effective simply because it has been in use for thousands of years." In comparison, his attack on feng shui is mild: "It is ludicrous that feng shui is ancient China's equivalent of geography," he writes. "Even if feng shui implies some reasonable elements, they are very few."

Of these few elements, he cites the Chinese preference for a house to face south. "The practical purpose is to have as much sunlight as possible in winter and have shade in summer. But why use terms like 'a green dragon on the left and a white tiger on the right'? So, feng shui is not totally superstition, but essentially superstition."

Actually I agree with much of his reasoning. It is his arrogance that I find uncomfortable. Because feng shui is not a science in the modern sense of the word, people like Fang tend to see it as the nemesis of science.

Granted, feng shui can easily be taken to ridiculous extremes and ritualized into something skin to superstition. As long as feng shui or the assault on it is not whipped into a frenzy, a rational being can weigh the pros and cons. If feng shui dictates a building sit on a shaky foundation, most people would ignore the master and listen to the architect. If feng shui suggests you can achieve better prospects by shifting your main gate by 12 degrees, as happened with Hong Kong's Disneyland, why not? It's innocuous.

Much of feng shui as practiced by ordinary people involves small things like the placement of a mirror here and a basin of water there. I don't believe it can work miracles. But, done properly and without hysteria, it makes the inhabitants feel good, just like a piece of soothing music.