from Tony Glover in Hong Kong
Anyone trying to let or sell downtown Hong Kong offices who is not versed in the beliefs of fung shui could be in for a nasty shock. The Hong Kong Chinese do not take into account only location, facilities, age of the building and comparable deals when valuing office property.
They are convinced that every building conveys a certain amount of good or bad fortune to the occupier. The art of calculating the proportions of good and bad fortune (joss) inherent in any property is known as fung shui. A building with good fung shui will bring prosperity to its occupants and one with bad fung shui could spell ruin. This is reflected in the eagerness of prospective tenants and eventually in the rent itself.
Working out the relative fung shui of a particular building is no back-of-an-envelope calculation and calls for the skills of an experienced geomancer. The factors taken into account often appear strange, if not downright crazy, to western minds. One essential tenet of the belief is that there is a sleeping dragon in the earth and that if the siting of a new building disturbs this dragon bad fortune will follow the occupiers.
But because fung shui is part of the general conception of good and bad luck determining everyone’s individual fate it is frequently difficult to take account of every aspect of the belief when designing and siting a new office development. Water, for instance, is generally considered to bring good joss and so a design featuring fountains or pounds can have very good fung shui.
Ludicrous as this sounds, it would be a brave, or perhaps foolish, negotiator who would dismiss fung shui as a lot of superstitious nonsense. There are several buildings in the business area of Hong Kong whose fung shui leaves much to be desired in Chinese eyes and this is reflected in their relative unpopularity. There are one or two examples of buildings with such bad fung shui that they cannot find tenants.
In fact, some British commercial agents are taking fung shui very seriously indeed. David Runciman, a director of the Hong Kong branch of Richard Ellis, describes himself as an absolute convert to the belief and has even had his Hong Kong home built in accordance with strict fung shui principles.
But even buildings planned in consultation with a Hong Kong geomancer — and the phone book is full of these advisers — can have unforeseen flaws. Staff in a recent office development were upset to find that their view from the window comprised a bad fung shui factor. The problem was that a nearby office building was angled in such a way as to remind the worried staff of a tombstone.
