Feng-shui has a legal status in China. When there is anywhere in China a dispute between people on the ground of alleged interference with and disturbance of the Feng-shui aspects of a grave or house, the judicial tribunals of China will entertain the claim, examine into its merits and decide the case on the presumption that Feng-shui is a reality and a truth, not a fiction. Feng-shui has even a political status in China. When a rebellion breaks out in any of the eighteen provinces, the first step invariably taken by the Government is not to raise troops, but to dispatch messengers instructed to find out the ancestral tombs of the several leaders of the rebellion, to open the tombs, scatter their contents and desecrate the graves in all possible ways. For this is supposed to be the surest means of injuring the prospects and marring the possible success of the rebels.

Again, when land had to be ceded to the hated foreigner up and down the China Coast, as a so-called foreign concession, the Chinese Government would invariably select a spot condemned by the best experts in Feng-shui as one that combined a deadly breath with all those indications of the compass which imply dire calamities upon all that settle down there and their children’s children. If the spot had not to be ceded by treaty, it would be pointed out to the unsuspecting foreigner as the only one open for sale, and anyhow the ignorant barbarian sceptic would become the supposed dupe and laughing-stock of the astute Chinaman.

Witness, for instance, the views held by intelligent Chinese with regard to the island of Sha-meen, the foreign concession, so to say, of Canton. It was originally a mud flat in the Canton river in the very worst position Feng-shui knows of. It was conceded to the imperious demand of the foreign powers as the best available place of residence for foreigners, and when it was found that the Canton trade, once so prodigious, would not revive, would not flourish there, in spite of all the efforts of its supporters–when it was discovered that every house built on Sha-meen was overrun as soon as built with white ants, boldly defying coal tar, carbolic acid and all other foreign appliances–when it was noticed that the English Consul, though having a special residence built for him there, would rather live two miles off in the protecting shadow of a Pagoda,–it was a clear triumph of Feng-shui and of Chinese statesmanship.

Powerful, however, as Feng-shui is, it is by no means an insuperable barrier to the introduction of foreign civilisation in China. For it possesses an extraordinary amount of flexibility. It may be turned and twisted by skilful manipulation to suit almost any combination of circumstances. The most calamitous formation of country, the most portentous accumulation of deadly breath or ill-starred influences can be rectified by skill and unsparing exertion, so that all evil influences are either fended off or turned into instruments of blessing. Money, therefore, will go a long way to remove obstacles or collisions with Feng-shui. But it is a dangerous weapon, and will, if once employed, call forth an endless array of claims for money to compensate Feng-shui damages.

 Feng Shui, or the Rudiments of Natural Science in China by Ernest J. Eitel [b. 1839, d. 1908] Hong Kong: Trubner & Co., [1873]

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This article provides useful, detailed information about Birth Control.

Birth control or \”Contraception\” is a measure to prevent pregnancy. There are many methods used for birth control. Some methods work better than others.

When a couple plans to use birth control, the method that they choose depends on factors such as the mother\’s overall health, frequency of biological intercourse, how well the method works in preventing pregnancy, any possible side effects and the mother\’s comfort level in using the method.

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None of the above methods except abstinence are 100% effective. Doctors and nurses are the best professionals to consult on an appropriate birth control measure.

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In Feng-shui we have what may be called, from a Chinese point of view, a complete amalgamation of religion and science. Unfortunately, however, the religious element in Feng-shui was through the early disappearance of the ancient theism distorted into a form of gross superstition, half Tauistic, half Buddhistic, and what I have hitherto, by a stretch of charity, called Chinese physical science is, from a scientific point of view, but a conglomeration of rough guesses at nature, sublimated by fanciful play with puerile diagrams.

But however that may be, the fact remains nevertheless, that Feng-shui is at present a power in China. It is an essential part of ancestral worship, which national religion, neither Tauism nor Buddhism managed to deprive of its all-pervading influence. Feng-shui is, moreover, so engrafted upon Chinese social life, it has become so firmly intertwined with every possible event of domestic life (birth, marriage, housebuilding, funerals, etc.) that it cannot be uprooted without a complete overthrow and consequent re-organisation of all social forms and habits. The pious reverence which every Chinaman accords to whatever can claim the prestige of antiquity, is another element explaining the wide-spread influence of Feng-shui. Its origin can indeed be traced back, as I have shewn, to remote ages, but popular opinion connects the origin of Feng-shui with the ancient Hwang-ti, and looks upon this system as being as ancient as China itself. Another consideration gains for Feng-shui the respect and sympathy even of many educated and learned men. This is the fundamental connection in which Feng-shui boasts to stand with the scheme of diagrams, as laid down in the Yih-king, and the fact that the whole system of Feng-shui is in perfect unity with the vagaries of Tauists and Buddhists on the one hand and Choo-he’s modern philosophy on the other. Feng-shui is indeed the refined quintessence of Tauistic mysticism, Buddhistic fatalism and Choo-he’s materialism, and as such it commands if not the distinct approval yet the secret sympathy of every Chinaman, high or low.

Of course highly educated and particularly intelligent Confucianists will not acknowledge that they believe in the crude apocalyptic utterances of an ordinary geomancer, but within their own walls these same intellectual Confucianists will after all regulate every single domestic affair in strict accordance with the most approved canons of Feng-shui. Of course the Chinese Government, as such, will not acknowledge the catholicity and orthodoxy of Feng-shui, and yet it publishes year after year, with expressedly Imperial sanction, an almanac containing all the tables and data, references and diagrams, that a geomancer requires as a daily vade-mecum.

Feng Shui, or the Rudiments of Natural Science in China by Ernest J. Eitel [b. 1839, d. 1908] Hong Kong: Trubner & Co., [1873]

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This article provides useful, detailed information about Birth Announcement.

When a baby is born, it\’s a matter of joy to the parents, grandparents and all their near and dear ones. A Birth announcement is one way of sharing the joy with the community.

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People who are conservative and traditional literally write their announcements by using pens or felt pens on glossy high quality paper. Some of them use hand drawn gorgeous and unique designs and a few photographs to go with the message. They fit this arrangement inside hand painted frames. Some prefer varnished wooden or gold plated metal frames. Others like colored ribbons to enhance the beauty of the announcement cards.

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It was not to long ago parents spent a lot of time preparing birth announcement cards. Today, birth announcement companies can help with all the preparations. Most of these companies have their own web site and parent and well wisher can go to the webpage, click the relevant link, get all the necessary information need to make an announcement card and place an order. The company will do the rest from design to hosting.

Birthday announcements can make the baby\’s special day a most memorable and cherished event.

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With the rise of the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-905), which is famous for its revival of literature generally and of poetical literature especially, which had hundreds of Buddhistic works translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, a new era opened, particularly favourable to the propagation of mystic and fanciful doctrines assuming, as geomancy had learned to do, the garb of national as well as Tauistic and Buddhistic philosophy. The notion of five planets (Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn) influencing the earth and every living being, made its first appearance about this time, and was eagerly taken hold of by the professors of Feng-shui. The above-mentioned “book of interment” became now a popular handbook, and various other books, among which the Han-lung-king (the canon on the art of rousing the dragon), the Ts’ing-nang-king (the canon of the green bag) and the E-lung-king (the canon on the doubtful dragon), are the most important. The Han-lung-king mentions also, in addition to the five planets, the above-mentioned nine stars, which some commentators refer to the constellation called bushel, whilst others explain them to be the seven stars of the Great Bear with two neighbouring stars, others again declaring them to be floating about in space. But the Han-lung-king bases on the influence of these stars a whole theory of selecting propitious sites for houses or tombs. The Ts’ing-nang-king opens with an exposition of the mystic properties of the combination of even and uneven numbers (1-6, 2-7, 3-8, 4-9, 5-10), and proceeds to lay down the rule, that everything in heaven has its counterpart (in corresponding numbers) on earth. The E-lung-king refers especially to those forms and outlines of nature where dragon and tiger do not prominently stand forth and are as it were concealed. The authorship of these three books is ascribed to Yang-kwan-tsung, who professed to be a disciple of Ko-po and who developed especially that part of the Feng-shui system which refers to the signs of dragon and tiger, to the direction and shape of watersheds and the influence of water-courses.

But it was not till the rise of the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960) that all the above-mentioned elements of the geomantic art gathered into one grand system, built up on a philosophical basis and developed methodically, so as to combine every form of influence which heaven may be said to exercise on earth and which both heaven and earth were supposed to have on human affairs. This system is in fact but a practical application of the materialistic speculations for which Chow-leen-k’e, Chang-ming-taou, the two brothers Ch’ing, and most especially the illustrious Choo-he gained such general acceptation, that their cosmogonic theory of the universe, their speculations concerning the Great Absolute, the male and female principles and the two-fold breath of nature as the prime agents of all physical phenomena, became the national faith of China. No wonder then the devotees of Feng-shui, wisely adopting all that was popular and attractive in this grand scheme of natural philosophy, and promulgating their fantastic geomantic speculations in accordance with the favourite terminology of Choo-he, came in for a share in that national favour and national popularity which the great philosophers of the Sung dynasty so justly obtained. A scholar called Wang-k’e was the chief representative of the Feng-shui profession at this time. He is assumed to be a disciple of Ko-po, and claims the credit of having invented the theory of the mutual production and destruction of the five elements. It was he that systematized, in the phraseology of the new philosophy, all the traditional ideas on geomancy and reorganized the Feng-shui art on the basis of Choo-he’s materialism.

At the present day the adherents of Feng-shui are divided into two classes or schools, the Tsung-miau (ancestral temple) school, which took its rise in Foh-kien, and the Kwang-si school. In the preceding chapters I have explained the more prominent theories which these schools have in common, and I have therefore merely to add, that these two schools are chiefly distinguished by the comparative prominence each gives to one or other of four divisions of the Feng-shui system. The Foh-kien school of geomancers, claiming Wang-k’e as their founder, attribute the greatest importance to the doctrines of the order of nature (Li) and of the numerical proportions of nature (Su). They are therefore specially attached to the use of the compass. The second school, called the Kwang-si school of geomancers, because it took its rise in the Kwang-si province, claim Yang-kwan-tsung as their founder, and lay the greatest stress on the doctrines of the breath (K’e) and outlines (Ying) of nature. They use the compass too, but only as a subordinate help in prospecting the country, for their principle is, first to look for the visible symptoms of dragon and tiger and of a good breath, and then to judge of the surrounding influences by consulting the compass.

These two schools have produced a very voluminous literature, which is, however, but an expansion of the above-mentioned ideas on the basis of the philosophy of Choo-he.

Having thus traced the history and literature of Feng-shui down to the present, it only remains for me to add a few words as to the extent of influence which this strange medley of superstition, ignorance and philosophy possesses at the present day.
Feng Shui, or the Rudiments of Natural Science in China by Ernest J. Eitel [b. 1839, d. 1908] Hong Kong: Trubner & Co., [1873] 

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