Feng-shui

Feng shui
A Luopan, Feng shui compass.
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
Literal meaning	wind-water
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin fēngshuǐ Bopomofo ㄈㄥ ㄕㄨㄟˇ Wu Romanization fon平 sy上 Gan Romanization Fung1 sui3 Hakka Romanization fung24 sui31 Yue: Cantonese Jyutping fung1 seoi2 Southern Min Hokkien POJ hong-suí Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC hŭng-cūi
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese	phong thủy
Thai name
Thai	ฮวงจุ้ย (Huang Jui)
Korean name
Hangul
Hanja
Transcriptions Revised Romanization pungsu McCune–Reischauer p'ungsu
Japanese name
Kanji
Hiragana	ふうすい
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn fūsui Kunrei-shiki hûsui
Filipino name
Tagalog	Pungsóy, Punsóy

Feng Shui (pinyin: fēng shuǐ, pronounced [fɤ́ŋ ʂwèi] FUNG shway) is a Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing everyone with the surrounding environment. It is closely linked to Taoism. The term feng shui literally translates as "wind-water" in English. This is a cultural shorthand taken from the passage of the now-lost Classic of Burial recorded in Guo Pu's commentary: Feng shui is one of the Five Arts of Chinese Metaphysics, classified as physiognomy (observation of appearances through formulas and calculations). The feng shui practice discusses architecture in metaphoric terms of "invisible forces" that bind the universe, earth, and humanity together, known as qi.

There is no replicable scientific evidence that feng shui's mystical claims are real, and it is considered by the scientific community to be pseudoscience.

Historically, feng shui was widely used to orient buildings—often spiritually significant structures such as tombs, but also dwellings and other structures—in an auspicious manner. Depending on the particular style of feng shui being used, an auspicious site could be determined by reference to local features such as bodies of water, stars, or a compass.

Qi rides the wind and scatters, but is retained when encountering water.

Feng shui was suppressed in mainland China during the state-imposed Cultural Revolution of the 1960s but has since then regained popularity.

The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience briefly summarizes the history and practice of feng shui. It states that the principles of feng shui related to living harmoniously with nature are "quite rational," but does not otherwise lend credibility to the nonscientific claims. After a comprehensive 2016 evaluation of the subject by scientific skeptic author Brian Dunning, he concluded that there is nothing demonstrably real at all about the practice and stated that: