230
MAURICE FREEDMAN
rich man from Hong Kong). Similarly, the fung shui of buildings plays a less important role in the city than the country. There are naturally severe limits to what can be done in the urban area to extract the best geomantic possibilities from a given site and to avoid places which have been labelled as bad fung shui risks. By and large, I think we may say that in the city fung shui is a retrospective explanation of fortune rather than a prediction of it, and that in urban conditions far more reliance is placed on the dominant geomantic effects of crucial sites (government offices and other public and semi-public buildings). City-dwellers conducting a stranger around their streets point out to him the residences of rich men which have brought them good fortune or the houses which, because of their unfavourable sites, have exerted a malignant influence on their inhabitants. (A new road, pointing like a deadly arrow to Mr. A's house, brought him disaster. Mr. B enjoys the protection of wind and excluded and static water). In the countryside, in contrast, the geomancy of buildings is both forward-and backward-looking. The height of a new village house must take into account the height and position of the ancestral halls and other houses, in order that the fortunes of other people may not be prejudiced by one's efforts to improve one's own. In a remarkably interesting case being argued out during my stay in the New Territories a disproportion in the two halves of the roofs of new houses was the cause of an agitation which cost the people responsible for the houses much money and frustration. It was held that, the front sections of the roofs being longer than the rear, the future of the inhabitants would be cut short. As for retrospective geomancy, misfortune - disease, death, lack of male children, poor harvests, and so on - may come to be attributed to faults in fung shui which are then put right. The entrance to a wall round the village (wai) may need to be protected by new 'arms' or skewed to alter the orientation of the whole village. A building thought to be too high may be lowered. Again, good or bad fortune may be attributed to earlier fung shui actions for which in fact there is no evidence. It is a common feature of New Territories village organisation that communities which are now solidly or predominantly composed of one clan were in time past made up of several. The disappearance of the weaker ones, through emigration or failure to reproduce, is often said to have followed from their geomantic indiscretion or, as in a case which has impressed itself on me, from the superior geomantic techniques of the survivors. In this case the sole clan
230
MAURICE FREEDMAN
rich man from Hong Kong). Similarly, the fung shui of buildings plays a less important role in the city than the country. There are naturally severe limits to what can be done in the urban area to extract the best geomantic possibilities from a given site and to avoid places which have been labelled as had fung shui risks. By and large, I think we may say that in the city fung shui is a retros- pective explanation of fortune rather than a prediction of it, and that in urban conditions far more reliance is placed on the domin- ant geomantic effects of crucial sites (government offices and other public and semi-public buildings). City-dwellers conducting a stranger around their streets point out to him the residences of rich men which have brought them good fortune or the houses which, because of their unfavourable sites, have exerted a malignant in- fluence on their inhabitants. (A new road, pointing like a deadly arrow to Mr. A's house, brought him disaster. Mr. B enjoys the protection of wind and excluded and static water). In the country- side, in contrast, the geomancy of buildings is both forward-and backward-looking. The height of a new village house must take into account the height and position of the ancestral halls and other houses, in order that the fortunes of other people may not be pre- judiced by one's efforts to improve one's own. In a remarkably interesting case being argued out during my stay in the New Terri- tories a disproportion in the two halves of the roofs of new houses was the cause of an agitation which cost the people responsible for the houses much money and frustration. It was held that, the front sections of the roofs being longer than the rear, the future of the inhabitants would be cut short. As for retrospective geomancy, misfortune disease, death, lack of male children, poor harvests, and so on-may come to be attributed to faults in fung shui which are then put right. The entrance to a wall round the village (wai) may need to be protected by new 'arms' or skewed to alter the orientation of the whole village. A building thought to be too high may be lowered. Again, good or bad fortune may be attributed to earlier fung shui actions for which in fact there is no evidence. It is a common feature of New Territories village organisation that communities which are now solidly or predominantly composed of one clan were in time past made up of several. The disappear- ance of the weaker ones, through emigration or failure to reproduce, is often said to have followed from their geomantic indiscretion or, as in a case which has impressed itself on me, from the superior geomantic techniques of the survivors. In this case the sole clan
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