Theory and Reality of Feng Shui in Architecture and Landscape Art ed. by Florian C. Reiter (review)

most important classical geomantic manual for house siting, planning, and building. The next book for translation was Nanjie ershisi pian 難解二十四篇 (the Book of the Twenty-Four Difficult Problems). The book is organized in a question and answer style and covers twenty-four key practical points to note by geomancers in their search for auspicious places. The last Chinese geomantic text the author translated was Michuan shuilong jing 秘傳水龍經 (the Secretly Passed Down Water Dragon Classic), generally known as Shuilong jing or Water Dragon Classic. The translation of geomantic classics in this book is generally well done and in highly readable English, despite the fact that classical Chinese is difficult to translate into Western languages. It is a daunting task for anyone to translate traditional fengshui texts that employ ambiguous, mystic, and unfamiliar Chinese metaphysical terms. The author confessed that ‘‘I could no longer read without spectacles’’ after spending five months translating ‘‘the Water Dragon Classic’’ (p. 111). This book does not include the original Chinese texts that the English translations are based on. Attaching the Chinese text as an appendix to the book or as a part of the main chapters following the translation would have assisted serious scholars of Chinese geomancy studies by providing an opportunity for cross checking with the original Chinese texts. In the case of Zangjing (Book of Burial), at least three other translations are available on the internet or in published book form, and readers of this book might benefit from comparing other English translations with the one in this book. I wish to congratulate Dr. Paton on the successful completion of translating these difficult pre-modern Chinese geomancy texts. The discourse on and translation of five Chinese geomantic classics in this monograph are a welcome addition to the growing literature on the theory and practice of geomancy in China. HONG-KEY YOON University of Auckland FLORIAN C. REITER, ed., Theory and Reality of Feng Shui in Architecture and Landscape Art. Asien- und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, vol. 41. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013. vi, 182 pp. J48 (pb). ISBN 978-3-44710005 -2 Beginning in 2005, the City University of Hong Kong hosted four international conferences on the subject of fengshui 風水.1 Following the third conference, a volume of proceedings titled, Research in Scientific Feng Shui and the Built Environment, was published.2 For the fifth conference in 2010, the venue moved to Humboldt University in Berlin under the auspices of Professor Florian Reiter, 1 In this review, the convention of linking pinyin syllables that form words will be followed. Thus, the word 風水 will be rendered as fengshui, unless it is spelled otherwise in a published chapter or book title. 2 Michael Y. Mak and Albert T. So, eds., Research in Scientific Feng Shui and the Built Environment (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2009). 242 BOOK REVIEWS after which a second proceedings volume, titled Feng Shui (Kan Yu) and Architecture, was produced.3 The volume under review is the proceedings of the second Berlin symposium, the sixth in the series, which was held at Humboldt University in 2012. The intention of the Hong Kong conference organizers was to ‘‘bring the study of fengshui beyond the shadow of superstition’’ and to investigate whether it has any scientific foundation. One important aspect of that investigation was to ‘‘filter out’’ the ‘‘imaginative’’ from what was authentic, especially in the ‘‘rules of the Compass School.’’ The methodology of the Form School, on the other hand, was not suspect, since ‘‘a large proportion . . . is actually taught in schools of architecture around the world.’’4 Consequently, of the four parts of that first conference proceedings, only one dealt with the Compass School, and its conclusion was that ‘‘contradiction renders the theory inconsistent and questionable.’’ Furthermore, ‘‘[i]t is important that the practitioners be aware of this in the applications.’’5 This last statement clarifies a subtext that might escape some readers: so-called scientific fengshui is that whose theories are ‘‘logical’’ and have practical applications, and the task of investigation is to show the efficacy behind such practices. This stance was not as strictly maintained in the Berlin symposia, although it might not be obvious to...