A critical review: the complete illustrated guide to Feng Shui

The complete illustrated guide to Feng Shui – how to apply the secrets of Chines Wisdom for health, wealth and happiness is a comprehensive and practical guide to display the principles of Feng Shui. The author is Lillian Too, who is a best-selling author, television personality and Feng Shui practitioner from Malaysia. She graduated as an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1976. In the early 1970s Lillian Too became her preoccupation with Feng Shui when she began to learn kung fu with Master Yap Cheng Hai who told her many stories about Feng Shui and its potent effect on families and households. She began to research into this subject through studying of the whole spectrum of Chinese cultural practice. In order to improve and enhance her career and family life, she has actively utilized Feng Shui, and she has always been her practice based on the real world.

Obviously, this book is in the field of Feng Shui, which is an ancient Chinese practice believed to utilize the Laws of both Heaven (astronomy)and Earth(geography), and to help one improve life by receiving positive Qi. The words 'Feng Shui' literally translates as "wind and water" in English, and in literal sense, "wind and water" refer to the topography of the earth, including its mountains, valleys, and waterways. And it is cultural shorthand taken from the following passage of the Zhangshu (Book of Burial) by Guo Pu of the Jin Dynasty: Qi rides the wind and scatters, but is retained when encountering water [1]. To be frank, Qi is a difficult word to translate and is usually left untranslated. Literally the word means "air". And in Feng Shui, "Qi" means "flow of energy". Feng Shui adopts a sensible approach toward human’s relationship with the environment and personal living space. The most important spirit of Feng Shui’s core philosophy is that humankind must live in harmony with the environment. This idea conforms to our promotion about protecting the natural environment.

This book aims to provide the secret elements of Chinese wisdom into technological and scientific advance applicable to interior and environment design. It reveals that the philosophy of Feng Shui is not just focuses on the contours of physical landscapes – mountains and rivers, and their shapes, sizes, and courses but can be applied to modern interior and environment design as a part of fusion of different cultures.

The author chooses this topic as she wants to introduce Feng Shui to be a world-wide knowledge and method of living in a harmonious relationship with the earth’s environment. Moreover, she uses Feng Shui as a bridge to situate the human builting’s environment on good and right spots. As a traditional and mysterious culture, Feng Shui is not as familiar as other Chinese conventional ones; actually, it is an unfamiliar thing even to Chinese. But this book gives audiences a distinct and clear layout of Feng Shui’s principles, and it also introduce some practices how to use these principles in landscape, homes, decorations business places and so on. This text addresses the principles of Feng Shui which can be used in a wide variety of scope. For example, how to find or advance a harmonious landscape, and planning to maximize Feng Shui for interior design and decorating in the physics space, furthermore, it can be used as a tool to enhance business and career success, even for health, romance, and marriage. As a good result, people read this book and then will find that they could use the practical application of Feng Shui to regulate the location of their home and its interior and decoration, moreover, to enhance their personal relationships.

The book is narrative and well structured. Each chapter begins with an introduction to summaries the main idea or a significant question. And then it is followed with an explanation that can be divided into several parts about analysis different elements of Feng Shui with their uses and functions. It try to clearly explaining many Chinese traditional, past comprehension, professional names of Feng Shui and its principles in a simple and easy way to read and understand to audience who may not be familiar with Feng Shui or even has touched with this aspect in the first time. Furthermore, it describes the practical applications and advice about how to apply them in a clear, straightforward text with examples which all based on experience. It is illustrated and explained with many unique images which could give an exactly right guide to beginner. From this book, it can be found that the author uses a large number of helpful features to audience to understand. For example, a clear index as a guide, novel self-made models illustrate the practice of Feng Shui, representative and beautiful illustrations in nearly every page in order to show different styles of objects can be auspicious or inauspicious, several interesting personal cases, boxed features introduce detailed advice, further reading and useful addresses of Feng Shui Institutes at end word. Moreover, this guide book is not only give good advice to enhance benefits in human’s life but also list bad advice and locations in order to guide the audience to avoid or resolve them.

In my point of view, this is a good book as a spreader of Feng Shui. The author makes a central thesis to arrange each subject rigorously. The author’s thesis and purpose of this work is to excite audience’s thought and mobilize them to live in harmony with the natural. It gives a clear definition and practices a distinct practice of Feng Shui and also has lucidity of thought. If it is a Chinese book, I should say it does very well. However, as an English publication, facing with people who speak and think in English, it does not achieve the author’s aim.

Firstly, Feng Shui as a subject, it is considerably in dispute. Some people argue that Feng Shui is not a science; it is an integrated science with a holistic observation of the environment, geography, health and so on. Some people suggest that Feng Shui is the old world of superstition, and obstructs the Chinese people’s creativity in the architectural design, interior design and other forms. And others claim that feng shui is just a belief about environmental will influence the fate; this is a superstition, and the justifications is incompatible with modern science. In my opinion, Feng Shui is a part of Chinese culture, a reflection and the embodiment of Chinese philosophy in the environment; it is also the environment concept of Chinese people. But it still exits feudalistic and superstitious ideas, as well as many rules which are unable to explain by science. So I do not agree with the author argues that Feng Shui is neither difficult to understand nor hard to practice.

Secondly, this book is written in English, but it still could be discovered that it is written in Chin-glish, not pure English obviously. As a result, it is easy for me to understand the author’s meanings and even implications because we both have Chinese background. But it is very difficult for a people know English but do not understand Chinese culture to find out what is the implied meanings of this book. It can be proved by a British teacher who give me the advice of writing, he said he understand the words but do not understand what the meaning of these words.

Finally, it has too many information about Chinese traditional culture for a general reader in Britan and it can be proved in the lending number of this book, only 9 times from August 1999 to February 2008 including my time. Compared with another Feng Shui book – The Feng Shui handbook, how to creat a healthier living and working environment, which is much more popular because the latter one shows much more general language to explain. And this book is too complex to comprehend. For example, about using compass and the Pa Kua to activate good luck. In my mind, compass and the Pa Kua are filled with Chinese characteristics obviously, and the principles of using are too specialization to beginner. They are very difficult to be controlled by a layman and they will become not measurement tools but special furnishings.

In summary, as a complete illustrated guide book to Feng Shui, it makes a significant contribution within its field and is appreciated as a Feng Shui classic in Feng Shui for Modern Living. But in my point of view, it is neither fish nor fowl. It involves most principles, but it does not show the origin of Feng Shui, the process of historical evolution and even some recommendations could be said to be no scientific basis. So, some parts of this book are recommended to read, such as how to allocate rooms, corridors, furniture. But some parts is rubbish, such as positioning a mirror to reflect the cash register will increase business turnover.