FENG SHUI. - The term f. s. (lit. "wind and water") designates in China a "pseudo-scientific system that is supposed to teach how and where to build tombs, temples, and buildings, so that the dead, the gods and the living may be placed entirely, or as much as possible, under the beneficent influence of nature."
The system, which goes back to the remotest antiquity, starts from the conception that all the inhabitants of the world live subject to the alternation of influences. If human acts conflict with the omnipotent Tao or course of nature, a fatal conflict will inevitably follow in which man will get the worst of it. It is therefore necessary, as far as possible, to obey and follow the course of nature. In every locality certain topographical characteristics (natural or artificial) are believed to exist which indicate or modify the course of the universal spirit (Ch'i), such as the shape of the mountains, the course of the rivers, the height and shape of the buildings, the direction of the roads and bridges, the arrangement of the shadows of the sun and the moon. Beneficent influences prefer winding and tortuous paths, low houses of a single story, with arched roofs, with the main front facing south; tombs are preferably built on the southern slopes of a mountain at points where they can nestle into its inlets, and this because the dead are "particularly struck by cosmic currents and can use them to benefit the living"; roofs should be adorned with dragons and other symbolic figures; the peaks of mountains become centers of beneficent influences if pagodas are raised upon them; the doors of houses can ward off evil spirits if covered with inscriptions on paper. The professor of the art of F. S. (called F. S. Sien Sheng or Yin Yang Sien Sheng) uses the Lo King, a kind of astrolabe with a compass, to observe the direction of the celestial harmonies and to determine the places most suited for the exploitation of the beneficent influences.