Feng shui

In ancient times as well as today, Feng Shui, (風水) pronounced in English as [] ("fung shway"), was known as "Kan-Yu" which means 'The Law of Heaven and Earth.’ Today's Feng Shui schools teach that it is the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment. Feng shui literally translates as "wind-water." This is a cultural shorthand taken from the following passage of the Zhangshu (Book of Burial) by Guo Pu of the Jin Dynasty:

"The qi that rides the wind stops at the boundary of water."

Feng shui is a discipline with guidelines that are compatible with many techniques of agricultural planning as well as internal furniture arrangements. Space, weather, astronomy, and geomagnetism are basic components of feng shui. Proponents claim that feng shui has an effect on health, wealth, and personal relationships.

Introduction
Early feng shui relied on astronomy to find correlations between humans and the universe and it is inseparable from an understanding of political power in premodern China.

Chinese often used the celestial pole determined by the pole stars to determine the north-south axis of settlements. This technique explains why Shang palaces at Xiaotun lie 10° east of due north. In some cases, as Paul Wheatley observed, they bisected the angle between the directions of the rising and setting sun to find north. This technique provided the more precise alignments of the Shang walls at Yanshi and Zhengzhou.

Currently Early Yanshao and Hongshan cultures provide the earliest evidence for feng shui. Professor David Pankenier and his associates reviewed astronomical data for the time of the Banpo dwellings (4000 BCE) to show that the asterism Yingshi (Lay out the Hall, in the Warring States period and early Han era) corresponded to the sun's location at this time. Centuries before, the asterism Yingshi was known as Ding. It was used to indicate the appropriate time to build a capital city, according to the Shijing. Apparently an astronomical alignment ensured that Banpo village homes were sited for solar gain.

The grave at Puyang (radiocarbon dated 5,000 BP) that contains mosaics of the Dragon and Tiger constellations and Beidou (Dipper) is similarly oriented along a north-south axis. The presence of both round and square shapes in the Puyang tomb, and at Hongshan culture ceremonial centers, suggests that the gaitian cosmography (heaven-round, earth-square) was present in Chinese society long before it appeared in the Zhou Bu Suan Jing.

Cosmography that bears a striking resemblance to modern feng shui compasses (and computations) were found on a jade unearthed at Hanshan (c. 3000 BCE). The design is linked by Li Xueqin to the liuren astrolabe, zhinan zhen, and Luopan.

All capital cities of China followed rules of Feng Shui for their design and layout. These rules were codified during the Zhou era in the "Kaogong ji" (Manual of Crafts). Rules for builders were codified in the "Lu ban jing" (Carpenter's Manual). Graves and tombs also followed rules of Feng Shui. From the earliest records, it seems that the rules for the structures of the graves and dwellings were the same.