Chinese Craft of Feng Shui

I am writing in reference to the intriguing front-page story on “the ancient Chinese craft” of feng shui (wind-water), which is “interwoven with superstition, astrology and Chinese philosophical concept.”

In China feng shui geomancers decide where a family should bury its dead relatives and often they choose the best piece of land on the family’s tiny farm. Eighty percent of the population is agrarian.

My friend Dr. J. Lossing Buck, Pearl Buck’s (incidentally the above subject is discussed in “The Good Earth”) first husband, was considered the foremost agricultural economist in China when I first came to know him in 1941 at the university in Chengtu, West China.

I have never forgotten what he told me: At that “point in time” 1.8% of China’s arable land was taken up by graves. Think of the population increase since then and what has happened to so much more of China’s needed arable land. In contrast look at cremation-practicing Buddhist Thailand where no good arable land is used up by graves!

WALDO RUESS

Santa Barbara