The Culture Of Fengshui In Korea

The term Fengshui, which literally means 'wind and water, ' is the ancient Chinese art of selecting an auspicious site to provide the most harmonious relationship between human and earth. The term is generally translated as "geomancy," and has had a deep and extensive impact on Korean, Chinese, and other East Asian cultures. Hong-key Yoon's book explores the nature of geomantic principles and the culture of practicing them in Korean cultural contexts. Yoon first examines the nature and historical background of geomancy, geomantic principles for auspicious sites (houses, graves, and cities) and provides an interpretation of geomantic principles as practiced in Korea. Yoon looks at geomancy's influence on cartography, religion and philosophy, and urban development in both Korea and China. Finally, Yoon debates the role of geomancy in the iconographical warfare between Japanese colonialism and Korean nationalism as it affected the cultural landscape of Kyongbok Palace in Seoul.

The first scholarly book to address Korean geomancy through an interdisciplinary lens. This book is a milestone in the history of academic research on the development and role of geomancy (fengshui in Chinese and p’ungsu in Korean) in Korean culture and society. As the first interdisciplinary work of its kind, it investigates many topics in geomancy studies that have never been previously explored, and contains contributions from a number of disciplines including geography, historical studies, environmental science, architecture, landscape architecture, religious studies, and psychoanalysis. While almost all books in English about geomancy are addressed to general readers as practical guides for divining auspicious locations, P’ungsu is a work of rigorous scholarship that documents, analyzes, and explains past and current practices of geomancy. Its readers will better understand the impact of geomancy on the Korean cultural landscape and appreciate the significant ecological principles embedded in the geomantic traditions of Korea; while researchers will discover new insights and inspirations for future research on geomancy not only in Korea, but in China and elsewhere. Hong-key Yoon is Associate Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and the author of The Culture of Fengshui in Korea: An Exploration of East Asian Geomancy.

Feng Shui is a body of ancient Chinese knowledge that aims at creating a harmony between environment, buildings and people. It represented the most significant set of architectural theory and practice in Chinese history. Feng Shui knowledge reflected the traditional Chinese attitudes towards the natural and built environment. With a desire to improve the relationship between human and the environment, there is an increasing interest for architects, building professionals and other property practitioners to apply the concepts of Feng Shui in building design. As Feng Shui knowledge represents a holistic view in creating harmonized built environment, research into the application of Feng Shui to the built environment needs to be addressed.

In Five Classics of Fengshui Michael Paton traces the theoretical development of this form of spiritual geography through full translations of major texts: the Burial Classic of Qing Wu, Book of Burial, Yellow Emperor’s Classic of House Siting, Twenty Four Difficult Problems, and Water Dragon Classic. This theoretical development is analysed through the lens of history, philosophy and sociology of science in an attempt to address Joseph Needham’s conundrum of the "great beauty of the siting" in traditional China being based of such a “grossly superstitious system” and to understand what part fengshui played in the environmental history of China.

The period we know as the Middle Ages, roughly the years 400–1400, saw the formation of ideas and institutions that mark modern societies. Developments as disparate as the foundation of Islam and the emergence of the middle class occurred during this pivotal millennium. Although historical study of the Middle Ages has traditionally focused on Western Europe, modern historians recognize the complex global nature of this era. For all major world regions, this three-volume work offers in-depth essays on broad themes, short entries on specific topics, and carefully selected primary documents to help readers more fully understand this critically important period. Edited by Joyce Salisbury, who is general editor of the award-winning Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life, and written by Professor Salisbury and a series of prominent historians with regional expertise, Greenwood Encyclopedia of Global Medieval Life and Culture comprises three volumes covering the following areas of the globe: Volume 1:Europe and the Americas Volume 2: Islam and Africa Volume 3: Asia and Oceania Each regional section comprises seven in-depth essays covering the following broad topics and concluding with bibliographies of important and current information resources: Historical Overview of the Region, Religion, Economy, The Arts, Society, Science and Technology, and Global Ties. The Global Ties essays trace the political, social, economic, religious, technological, or commercial connections that existed between the region under discussion and any other world regions during the Middle Ages. Each regional section also includes a series of brief entries covering people, events, developments, and concepts mentioned in the in-depth essays. Examples of entry topics include the following: Berbers, Emperor Harsha, Ethiopian Christianity, Flowery Warfare, Footbinding, Hildegard of Bingen, Jainism, Jihad, Maya Collapse, Neo-Confucianism, Romanesque, and Sharia. A series of sidebars in each section will provide lists, graphs, charts, and other useful data relating to the region. Each section will also be illustrated and will include a selection of interesting primary documents that further illustrate the main themes addressed in the in-depth essays. Cross-references within the sections and a detailed subject index will also help readers access information in the essays and short entries.

The grove, a grouping of trees, intentionally cultivated or found growing wild, has a long diverse history entwined with human settlement, rural practices and the culture and politics of cities. A grove can be a memorial, a place of learning, a site of poetic retreat and philosophy or political encampment, a public park or theatre, a place of hidden pleasures, a symbol of a vanished forest ecology, or a place of gods or other spirits. Yet groves are largely absent from our contemporary vocabulary and rarely included in today’s landscape practice, whether urban or rural. Groves are both literal and metaphorical manifestations, ways of defining spaces and ecologies in our cultural life. Since they can add meaning to urban forms and ecologies and contribute meaningfully to the significance of place, critical examination is long overdue. The editors have taken care to ensure that the text is accessible to the general reader as well as specialists.

Feng Shui is not all about tradition. The integration and harmony between the natural and built environments concerning modern architecture has long been discussed in Feng Shui, or more academically, Kan Yu. Based on Scientific Feng Shui for the Built Environment: Fundamentals and Case Studies published in 2011, this enhanced new edition has further taken into account the enhancements and new inputs in theories and applications. Emphasis is placed on two themes, sustainability and science. New case studies regarding sustainable design as viewed from a Feng Shui perspective, and integrated applications of different architectural models and their associations with Feng Shui concepts are added and elaborated. On science, other than exploring the new development of particle physics in relation to Feng Shui studies, a totally new approach to numerology and Luo Shu study based on modern linear algebra may bring readers new insight into the possibility of researching Feng Shui mathematically, in addition to the use of spherical trigonometry. This book offers a remarkable in-depth view of Feng Shui by integrating the historical theories with scientific explorations and examples of applications. It once again demonstrates that Feng Shui can be studied scientifically, and eventually scientific Feng Shui may become a new field of science in the academic world as well as a professional and orthodox discipline of architectural design for the built environment. Published by City University of Hong Kong Press. 香港城市大學出版社出版。

Feng Shui and the City analyses the past and contemporary influences of traditional geomancy on Chinese built environments across three domains: domestic spaces, spaces of commercial development and the public realm. Using Lefebvre’s notion of absolute and abstract space—spaces of ‘symbolic existence’ and ‘everyday life’ versus spaces of domination and control, it tracks evolving attachment to, and use of, Feng Shui in Guangdong and Hong Kong. The book seeks to understand the changing role of Feng Shui in modern urban development and its regulation, and to question what constitutes authentic Feng Shui today.