Half Day Feng Shui Tour

The Hong Kong Tourist Board conducts Feng Shui tours of the major buildings and sites around the city. A Feng Shui Master takes you to several sites and explains the basics of Feng Shui to everyone while travelling from site to site on a comfortable tour bus. For tour details click here: http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/local-tours/culture-fengshui.html

First Stop – the tour started with Lung Cheung Road lookout. Overseeing the old Hong Kong International Airport from this lookout you can clearly see the layout of the land that fits traditional Feng Shui principles. This auspicious Dragon’s Den is said to be what creates the energy that has made Hong Kong prosperous.

Second Stop – Nine Dragon’s Wall in Wan Chai – after this stop my husband was finally realising what I did and for some reason got attached to Fu Dogs. He saw the usefulness of temple lions at the entrance of some buildings and has put in a personal order for his office desk. This site shows office buildings directly opposite the police station – Police stations contain an imbalance of yin energy that can affect prosperity of the commercial businesses directly across the road. Lions have been used for centuries to guard the entrance to important buildings and keeping yin energy at bay. While lions guard and protect a building, in Feng Shui they are a necessity if the building faces another used to house sick people, dead people or criminals. This stop was useful is showing the architect’s creation and use of mountains and water to achieve shelter and prosperity – capturing it and bringing it up into the offices above.

Third Stop – Central District – For me, this was the highlight of the tour. The tour focuses on the physical Form School Feng Shui letting you experience and observe through your senses the wind and water in buildings that have incorporated traditional Feng Shui principles.

For anyone who is sensitive to their environment and external surroundings, you can feel how the environment and these buildings have been manipulated to achieve results.

The HSBC building was my favourite. From a physical perspective the entrance and the back are open – as in a house, it is not good to see the back door from the front door and yet this building is very prosperous. The curious thing to notice is when you physically step into the open space under the building – either from the entrance or the back, the wind stops. You have the sensation of shelter. And the escalators have been positioned to take this captured ‘chi’ up into the office building above. The architecture to capture this energy and force the wind to stop at the boundary of water seems to lie in the way the ground has been sculpted at a gradient and the curve of the glass ceiling as the first level of this building. Having good physical Feng Shui is not enough to ensure prosperity. HSBC also has good unseen energy that makes it prosperous today. From a Flying Star point of view, the entrance was prosperous in the age of 7 (1984 – 2004) and the back was left open to ensure longevity as it is now prosperous in this age of 8 (2004 – 2024).

The one building that everyone from a Feng Shui point of view knows about is the Bank of China. It is shaped with one sharp and pointed side (representing FIRE) directly facing HSBC and influencing other surrounding landmark buildings. A relatively new building built neighbouring the Bank of China – the Citibank building was designed to counteract this negative fire influence. Firstly it is of a regular shape which is good. This building is made of black glass (representing water). In Feng Shui Water destroys Fire and minimises Bank of China’s fire. It is also highly reflective which repels the negative shape back at the Bank of China.

There were many other cultural items discussed and experienced on this tour. Everyone, no matter at what level of Feng Shui knowledge will be able to appreciate it.

Grand Master Raymond Lo also conducts tours of Hong Kong and Macau and his schedule is located at this site: http://www.raymond-lo.com/ver2/courses/schedule.asp

I-Ching

Raymond Lo is the first person to translate traditional I-Ching Divination that is used by Eastern practitioners into English. Having completed his course prior, this is a branch of Chinese metaphysics that is quite possibly the hardest to learn, and once the fundamentals are understood, it is arguably the hardest to master.

The I-Ching or ‘Book of Change’ … is a system for forecasting and divination. Today there are many books written about this subject…all of them is based on the “Book of Change” compiled by King Wen of the Chou Dynasty and Confucius in around 500BC. As such, in the West, it is considered that the system written in this “Book of Change” is the only tool for I-Ching forecasting. However, the fact is that the professional fortune tellers in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have a totally different system of I-Ching Divination which has little to do with the “Book of Change”, but is more effective, precise and accurate. It appears that this system generally applied by Chinese people is not known in the West. As such, I think this book (I-Ching Divination for Feng Shui and Destiny—by Raymond Lo) is the very first attempt to introduce the Chinese way of practical I-Ching fortune telling system in English.” Grand Master Raymond Lo..

To apply I-Ching correctly, one must ask a specific question—the more specific and uncomplicated, the more accurate and easy to interpret the outcome. While thinking of the question, one tosses 3 I-Ching coins 6 times to produce a hexagram of yin and yang lines. Interpretation of the hexagram is based on the fundamental laws of Chinese metaphysics—Yin and Yang and the 5 elements of Earth, Metal, Water, Wood and Fire. As such, anyone who has studied Feng Shui and Four Pillars (Ba Tze) or other Chinese metaphysic sciences will be familiar with the I-Ching. The hexagrams developed are the same contained in the popular Bagwa mirror and form the foundation of all Chinese metaphysics. I-Ching will not only provide yes or no answers, it can describe and give indication to the how, why and when of a question. I-Ching can be requested stand alone or as part of a Destiny (Chinese Astrology) consultation

Po Lin Monastery and Tian Tan Buddha

On the very last day of our trip we decided to leave the bustling city and visit the Tian Tan Buddha or ‘Giant Buddha’ on Lantau Island. We would have liked to take the Ngong Ping cable car from Tung Chung (this is the same station to go to Disney Land) to Ngong Ping which drops you off close to the Po Lin Monastery, however, it was out of operation. The bus trip was winding and beautiful and took us up and over some of Hong Kong’s mountainous terrain. The Big Buddha is enormous. This statue is the world’s largest Buddha statue, by using bronze, it’s 34 metres tall and weighs 250 tonnes.

He makes you work for the privilege of seeing him up close and personal– however, the statue is so awe-inspiring that the hundreds of stairs to reach him did not seem that laborious. The Tian Tan Buddha is on Lantau Peak and the view from the top scans the many islands dotted just off the shoreline. There are also incredible trails and adjacent peaks that avid hikers would enjoy. The scenery from this vantage point is enhanced by the clouds that come rolling in over the peak creating a misty backdrop for this peaceful and sacred site (like a pagoda it houses ashes of the deceased).

For many tourists this is a must see and a great break from the crowded shopping destinations in Kowloon and Central. Next time we visit we will probably look at hiring sea side accommodation in this area of Hong Kong and enjoying some of the countryside