Mystic Money : Ancient Practice Gains New Believers in Search of Good Fortune

Yifan Ying’s video store in Thousand Oaks was a bust. But each of his attempts to remedy the situation--adding an adult video section, buying hundreds of laser discs and offering two-for-one video promotions--only put him further in debt.

To save his business, Ying turned to an ancient Chinese way of thinking about how to live in harmony with one’s environment that emperors and ordinary Chinese have consulted for centuries.

As a result, Ying moved his store, put a fish tank in one corner and placed his cash register in his store’s “money field,” where he says it now attracts cash rather than repels it.

Lawrence Chang had problems on two fronts. He needed advice on where to bury his father and on where to open a jewelry store. He also wound up adopting the ancient Chinese practice known as feng shui for solutions to his modern-day troubles.

In Chang’s case, the initial results also were excellent. He found a good burial plot for his father. And business started booming at the Westlake Village jewelry store that a feng shui master had selected for him.

At least for a while.

Ying and Chang are among a number of Chinese-American residents of Ventura County who have turned in times of trouble to an old idea from China in hopes of improving their lives in California.

Of course, some Chinese are as skeptical of feng shui as Westerners are of astrology. But these days, it’s not only Chinese who believe the past can help them.

Twenty years ago, the only books on feng shui were either arcane academic tomes in English or classical texts in Chinese. Nowadays, chain bookstores like the Barnes & Noble in Ventura carry close to a dozen titles on the subject. And at a recent talk by a Marina del Rey interior designer, 50 people bought up almost the store’s entire stock on the subject.

“The basic elements of feng shui make a lot of sense,” says Bill Powell, an associate professor of East Asian languages and religious studies at UC Santa Barbara. “If it also creates a sense of comfort and at-homeness, then so much the better.”

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The practice of feng shui (pronounced “fung shway”) stems from the idea that for good or ill, people are affected by their relationship to their surroundings and that living in harmony with the unseen cosmic energy called ch’i determines one’s health, prosperity and luck.

But even in places where the flow of energy has been disturbed, an expert can interpret this mysterious energy and offer suggestions on how to improve it, a practice also known as geomancy.

The characters feng and shui literally mean ‘wind’ and ‘water.’ The origins are linked to early Chinese inquiry into meteorology, medicine, geography, astronomy and alchemy. And Powell says that the Chinese have laid out their cities in accordance with its principles since the Han dynasty, which started 2,000 years ago.

One result of geomancy’s influence on Chinese thinking, Powell says, is an aesthetic preference for buildings that fit into a landscape, rather than dominate it.

He says the practice has come to inform his own sense of aesthetics, like his decision to plant bamboo behind a cabin he owns in the Sierras.

One idea central to feng shui, says Gary Seaman, an associate professor of anthropology at USC, is that the rhythms of the Earth are similar to those of the human body.

It is like acupuncture, says Seaman. And both can be understood as a form of medicine.

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Where a traditional Chinese doctor takes a patient’s pulse or listens to his breath, a feng shui master, or geomancer, would study a landscape, noting its hills, streams, roads or buildings.

But feng shui doesn’t focus only on the living. The dead count, too. Because of the importance of ancestors in China, geomancers consider such things as how comfortably--or uncomfortably--one’s parents rest in their graves.

For instance, some Chinese attribute Chiang Kai-shek’s rise to power to the especially good feng shui of his mother’s grave; they blame his downfall on the Communists for later digging it up.

The ancient Chinese practice first arrived in Ventura County with the primarily Cantonese-speaking male laborers who, lured by jobs as merchants and farmers, began settling here in the 1840s.

Today, most Chinese newcomers are young professionals. Many first came to the United States as students. They are likely to have studied English in school and mostly come from big cities like Taipei, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore.

Many consider feng shui little more than superstition. Among the skeptics is Lilly Wu, a manager at a Chatsworth electronic publishing company who lives in Thousand Oaks and also serves as principal of the Thousand Oaks Chinese School.

Founded 20 years ago by three families, the school now offers 16 classes on Chinese language and culture on Saturday mornings to 300 students.

Wu also teaches, instructing her mostly ABC--American-born Chinese--students about Chinese holidays like the Dragon Boat Festival and Tomb Sweeping Day.

But she sees a difference between teaching ancient customs and actually believing in some of the ancient Chinese practices.

“My mom believed in it. Me, I don’t believe in feng shui,” Wu says. “I definitely do not have that superstition . . . But some aspects of feng shui are more common sense than superstition.”

So the jade lions standing guard inside Wu’s front door, the jade dragon perched atop her stereo system, the bamboo depicted in scrolls hanging in her living room--all symbols associated with feng shui--suggest Wu’s tastes and background rather than her beliefs.

“I see it as tradition,” she explains. “I see it as fidelity to custom.”

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But for the faithful, the ancient Chinese beliefs come into play in almost every area of life.

Although Yifan Ying, the Thousand Oaks video store owner, initially turned to the old ways to bail out his failing business, he says his biggest payoff came in an unexpected area.

On top of his financial woes, Ying and his wife, Andrea, were despondent that after five years of marriage, they had not been able to have children.

Then came a Temple City feng shui master from Taiwan, Huing-Hui Chen, whose advice to Ying for both his home and store included a tip on where to place their bed.

Six months later, Ying says, his wife was pregnant. Now the proud father of two sons, Ying says with unabashed enthusiasm: “Feng shui is really incredible.”

The results at Ying’s video store were less dramatic.

Chen advised Ying to ditch his original store, since the feng shui there was apparently beyond repair. Then he gave him tips on how to enhance the energy flow in his new store, including the addition of the goldfish tank added to attract money.

Since the move, Ying says business has slowly, but steadily, improved. On top of that, his health is better and he feels a new kind of inner peace.

“You still need to work hard to succeed,” says Ying, who works 11 hours a day except Saturdays, when he takes a half-day off to take his sons to Chinese school. “But feng shui gives you an edge.”

As for Lawrence Chang, the jewelry store owner . . . well, it’s been more of a mixed bag.

Chang first traveled to Taiwan and hired a top feng shui expert to deal with the problem of finding an ideal burial plot for his father back in Taiwan.

“If your parents are buried in a spot with good feng shui,” said Chang, “then their descendants will get rich or become high officials.”

The first step was to find the ideal location, which turned out to be a $25,000 plot of ground near a dragon-shaped mountain. Then, after consulting a lunar almanac, an auspicious date was set for the elaborate burial ceremony, and “spirit” money was burned so that Chang’s father could use it in the next world.

Chang and his relatives also burned a paper TV set, a paper house, a paper bicycle and paper servants.

“We wanted Dad to be comfortable,” Chang said.

Solving Chang’s business problems was a bit more difficult, however.

Years after his father’s death, when faced with deciding where to locate his jewelry store, Chang flew the same expert from Taiwan to California.

They settled on a site in a Westlake Village mall on Hampshire Road that had so few customers that other store owners were calling it a ghost town.

At Chang’s second-floor shop, however, business was booming--proof to him that the feng shui master had done it again.

But that was before some changes at the mall that saw the removal of the escalator that carried Chang’s customers--and a stream of positive energy--to his shop. A water fountain that symbolized the flow of money was also removed. And business took a dive.

While Chang still believes in feng shui, he’s not bothering to call in any experts on his next immediate move.

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His only option now, he says, is to get out of his lease.

And then there’s Treasure Fang--a Thousand Oaks restaurant owner and ardent believer in feng shui.

Even though she came to the United States with a business degree from a top Chinese university, she found her adopted country inhospitable. She often got lost, she fumbled with the language and felt trapped in low-wage jobs.

“Things are very difficult for an immigrant in a new land,” says Fang, recalling how strange Southern California seemed at first. “I told my husband, ‘Maybe feng shui can make our lives here easier.’ ”

Fang arrived in the United States in 1979. It took about five years of hard times before she became interested in feng shui. In the years since, she has literally shaped both her Westlake Village condo and nearby restaurant, the Mandarin Wok, around the ancient belief.

Today Fang credits everything from her harmonious marriage to a successful battle against rectal cancer as having been helped by her home’s good energy.

She has so thoroughly embraced feng shui and its practices that she now studies it with Huing-Hui Chen, the Temple City geomancer, who has advised her on how to get the most out of her restaurant.

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On a recent afternoon, Fang watched intently as her teacher considered what could be done to improve its cosmic energy.

As Chen crossed the lobby of the Mandarin Wok, the top of the bent metal rod in his right hand swung slowly toward the east.

“Not good,” he said in Mandarin. “The wall of the new building across from the entrance to your restaurant is blocking your ch’i.”

A crestfallen Fang considered her 20-year lease on the restaurant and the declining receipts that come with blocked energy. But she brightened when Chen listed several improvements she should make to enhance the restaurant.

Chen’s most emphatic suggestion: Fang should widen a side exit that opens onto a mall parking lot and use that as the restaurant’s entrance.

Although the mall’s owners have so far not allowed her to do that, Fang isn’t despairing. Indeed, she is confident that she has the answer to future problems.

“It’s truly amazing,” Fang said, speaking of the impact feng shui has had on her life.

“Maybe it’s karmic coincidence that Chinese immigrants like myself have to come to the United States to discover the richness of our own traditions.”