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Green, or greenish-blue (linked to wood), stands for growth, youthfulness, freshness, posterity and tranquility. It is the colour of harmony. It is the colour of the dragon. Blue is an ambiguous colour. It can mean death. White (the glint of metal) is the colour of autumn and purity. It can also stand for mourning. Black (signifying water), the colour of winter and the north, is seen by some Chinese as lucky. But it is also the colour of bruising and therefore, frequently, not popular. It can be seen as the colour of calamity, guilt and evil.
Often a fung shui consultant will select colours, when decorating a flat, not only bearing in mind the Five Elements, but also depending on its orientation (east, south, west, north and centre in the Chinese order). Colour can affect mood and disposition. In this respect, there is some similarity with the West where emphasis on colour, light and sound are important. As one Chinese friend told the author, who had engaged a fung shui expert to advise him about the colours for his new flat, "The trouble is that a colour which is "right" for me, depending on my time and year of birth, I may not be happy living with."
Decor should, however, be in harmony with the natural elements. Colours should be selected with equilibrium and striking a balance in mind. Yang colours are warm, solid, bright and masculine. Yin colours are feminine, cool and liquid. There is again similarity between East and West in that, while China links colours to the Five Elements, some western artists see people, depending on their characters, as colours. For example, a phlegmatic man can be viewed as 'grey'.
Moving on from the Five Elements, structural proportions are obviously important, too, in both western and Chinese architecture. But the Chinese believe some dimensions actually encourage good fortune while other measurements are to be avoided. Nevertheless, the use of special formulae, and the ancient Lu Pan (the patron saint of builders) check (ruler), used in ancient times by carpenters and other craftsmen to encourage auspiciousness, has become almost a lost art. With this 'door ruler', as it is sometimes called, all main measurements of a structure should correlate with propitious numbers (Lung, 1991: 26). It is something like a module system in the West.
The Chinese believe also that a square is not a 'perfect square' and an 'idealised' or 'symbolised' square is 'more perfect'. In some ways, again,