So it was the end of my second week in Hong Kong and time was starting to fly past. My job was taking me to new and wonderful places: out for slap up feeds, my first fashion show and now this – a Feng Shui class.
But the Feng Shui wasn’t just free for me. Part of a tourist board initiative, the class is offered as a free introduction for visitors into traditional activities. In addition to Feng Shui, Discover Hong Kong offers Chinese cake baking, contemporary medicine, Cantonese Opera and martial arts. I went to take some snaps of the class for a feature and found myself joining a class of American college students all born in the year of the sheep (1991).
This was my first taste of Feng Shui, unless you count an ill-fated episode during my teenage years when, during exam week, I rearranged all the furniture in my room as the ultimate act of procrastination.
Feng Shui (pronounced ‘Fong Shway’ in Mandarin) saw a huge boost in the west during the early 90s and gift shops stocked up on wind chimes and tiny fountains; on Changing Rooms Laurence Llewellyn Bowen talked endlessly of Chi. I thought – like most people – that it was a load of hokkum. But the Hong Kong Chinese are a very pragmatic lot and not liable to leave anything as important as luck to chance; people here have their homes, offices and lives thoroughly ‘Feng Shuied’ by Geomancers.
The class was great fun and it was interesting learning about technique, although at one point one of the girls asked the teacher why there was an object in the spot where it would bring the exact worst energy to his Chi and the guy had no comeback – so much for 20 years as a FS Master.
That evening – thanks to wheedling myself a free week’s trial at Fitness First – I also got to try that other great art of flowing energies: Tai Chi. This was much more interesting and I could feel the benefits in concentration after just one class. We learned a few postures and then partnered up for some ‘Pushing Hand’, where you learn to grapple with another person. As usual at this stuff I was a total malco but my partner was calm and patient (as you would expect from a follower of this most gentle of martial arts) and I mastered some of the technique.
So there you have it – two totally free ways to enjoy some traditional Chinese culture and help exercise your Chi.
