INSTANT KARMA
BY JOHN GOFF
The first time I ever heard about fung shui, pronounced feng shway, was spring, 1992. I was in Hong Kong, and Alvin Mak, a vice president at Citicorp International, and I were talking about Hong Kong's economic boom. While we looked out the window at the spectacular skyline along Victoria Harbor, Mak said it was amazing how much the philosophy of fung shui had dictated the design of the city's skyline. When I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, Mak went on to explain that fung shui, which literally means "wind and water," is the ancient Chinese art of geomancy, which involves the proper alignment of objects with geographical features to ensure harmony and good fortune. In Hong Kong, Mak said, everything gets aligned. Skyscrapers, escalators, office furniture. "When corporations build new offices in Hong Kong, fung shui masters are brought in to advise on the construction. I even had a fung shui expert come in last year and analyze my office."I just looked at him, incredulous. From my Western perspective, I wondered why a man of high finance, of numbers, of logic would listen to a spirit doctor. After a moment of silence, I asked him. He paused, then said, "It can't hurt."
While the Hong Kong government does not keep official statistics on such things, one source privately concedes that fung shui is a multibillion dollar business in the British territory. And fung shui is spreading to other parts of the globe as well. City planners in Vancouver, Canada, have reportedly consulted a fung shui expert. So, too, have executives at Hong Kong Shanghai Bank in London and Motorola Semiconductor in Phoenix. But in Hong Kong, the list of fung shui subscribers reads like a Who's Who of corporate universe. Citicorp Bank. The Regent Hotel. Motorola.
Says C.D. Tam, the general manager of Motorola Semiconductor's Hong Kong, Ltd., "Following fung shui tells your employees that you are doing everything you do to be successful." He's not kidding. Motorola Semi's new 326,000-square-foot factory in Tai Po is built around fung shui concepts. So, too, is most everything else in Hong Kong. From the sea of red corporate logos to the ocean of fish bowls in corporate headquarters, fung shui can be found in almost every aspect of business life in Hong Kong—if you know what to look for.
David Lung does. Lung, studied fung shui from a Chinese master for 10 years. Well-dressed, Marlboro-huffing, Lung follows the wisdom of the ancients to ensure a harmonious work setting, and employs the marvels of technology to suck cigarette smoke from his own office. An advisor to the Hong Kong Bank on matters of cosmic balance, Lung says there are several key elements in establishing good fung shui in a building.
First, Lung says it is imperative that a building faces water and, conversely, is flanked by mountains. Explains Tam, "The mountains behind you are solid. They protect you. And the water in front of you brings money and profit." That is, if you don't block the view. According to Lung, the spirits that inhabit mountains tend to get very testy when your new building blocks their view of H20. In the case of the new Hongkong Bank building, which blocked the mountain spirit's prospect of Victoria Harbor, Lung advised bank officials to clear the sight lines by constructing a huge open-air atrium on the ground floor. In fact, a number of major office buildings in Hong Kong have see-through lobbie—just to keep the spirits happy.
Another consideration when putting up a building, Lung says, is the actual direction the structure faces. According to Lung, mountains have meridians of prosperity, or "profit lines," that are based on the physical faces of the mountain. The idea, he says, is to make sure a building lines up with one of these meridians. "The Hongkong Bank building's front door is pointing in the same direction as one of 5 meridians of Victoria Peak," Lung says, "and that helps give it good fung shui."
Sharp angles, on the other hand, give off bad fung shui. Geomancers say sharp angles on buildings are like spirit daggers, sending destructive energy deep into the heart of whatever unfortunate structure happens to sit in the line of fire. Local secretaries who work in offices that are on the receiving end of these fung shui daggers often set up small mirrors, called bhat gwa, to ward off the bad fung shui. Bruce Lee, the Hong Kong-born film star, believed he was chased by evil spirits and put up a bhat gwa in a tree in front of his house. To this day, locals in Hong Kong tell how a typhoon knocked down Lee's tree, smashing the bhat gwa. A few days later, Lee died mysteriously.
Of all sharp angles, though, the triangle is the worst. In Cantonese, the phrase for triangle sounds like the phrase for burial urns, and in fung shui, words that sound like other more ominous words are considered extremely bad omens. This is why dozens of skyscrapers in Hong Kong, including the Central Plaza (Asia's tallest building), have lopped-off triangles for roofs.
This concern with word sound-alikes is most evident, however, in fung shui's obsession with numbers. The Cantonese word for four sounds like the word for death. Naturally, businesspeople are not exactly overjoyed with office space on the death floor. Hospital administrators are even less enthusiastic about it—most hospitals in Hong Kong don't even have a fourth floor.
Many ethnic Chinese executives prefer space on the ninth floor (nine sounds like the word for eternity), or the 33rd floor (three sounds like life). Of course, eight remains the most prized number in Hong Kong—eight sounds like prosperity. License plates crammed with eights are auctioned off for huge prices in Hong Kong. And in New York, the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office paid the local phone company a considerable chunk of change just to get the number 265-8888. Colors, too, play a critical part in creating good fung shui. "Red is lucky," Lung says, 'but blue is considered evil, sinister." This can be seen all over Hong Kong, particularly in corporate logos. Hongkong Bank's logo is red, as is the logo for the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.
For the most part, though, fung shui advisors try to keep malevolent spirits from ever entering a building. This includes making sure that elevators are not directly ahead when you walk into a building, but rather off to the right. In addition, escalators are usually at a diagonal from the entrance, which not only confuses the spirits, but also keeps money from flowing out of a building.
But once an evil spirit is in the house, geomancers do everything they can to get rid of it—and then re-establish good fung shui. Lung will spend an hour or two in an office before he makes specific fung shui suggestions. He says proper furniture alignment includes making sure desks face water, but never face doors. If an office doesn't have a harbor view, Lung tells clients to supply their own water, which is why so many offices in Hong Kong have goldfish bowls. Plants are also considered good luck, with big leaves seen as a sign of impending prosperity.
For an office building already rife with evil spirits, fung shui experts often advise clients to hang pictures on a slant so the spirits won't be able to rest in their office. Lung, who commands up to $500 an hour for a consultation, says he will not haggle over price—a rarity in Hong Kong. "Haggling over the price of fung shui consultation will affect the fung shui," he says.
Of course, some people in Hong Kong claim they pay no heed to fung shui to begin with. The future owners, for instance. Officially, fung shui remains outlawed in China. This, no doubt, explains why the Bank of China's corporate headquarters in Hong Kong has about the worst fung shui ever.
Designed by I.M. Pei, the BOC tower was built to resemble a bamboo shoot. It was not built—could not be built—with fung shui in mind. It shows, too. The building is a geomancy disaster, with a series of interlocking triangles forming extremely sharp angles on the sides of the edifice.
When the BOC tower was nearing completion in the late 1980s, a huge controversy ensued, with some Hong Kong citizens convinced that the building's bad fung shui portended doom for Hong Kong under Chinese rule. Bank officials remained adamant, saying they could not be bothered with fung shui. They did, however, schedule the building's topping off ceremony for the second week in August. The date was 8/8/88, which just happened to be the luckiest fung shui day of the century. Everyone at the bank thought it was a remarkable coincidence.
John Goff, who writes about Asia for a number of business magazines, is currently rearranging his office.
First published in Hemisphere Magazine (for United Airlines), November 1993. Used here with the editors' permission.
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