CHINA REAL TIME REPORT
Leave ‘Feng Shui’ to the Chinese, Taoist Priest Tells U.S. Official
May 21, 2015 3:22 pm HKT
A Taoist priest is refuting a U.S. official’s understanding of the concept “feng shui,” a whimsical twist to Sino-U.S. relations amid an increasingly tense row over sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.
Last week, Daniel Russel, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told the Washington Post: “Reclamation isn’t necessarily a violation of international law, but it’s certainly violating the harmony, the feng shui, of Southeast Asia, and it’s certainly violating China’s claim to be a good neighbor and a benign and non-threatening power.”
Now, Taoist priest Liang Xingyang is rebutting the U.S. official’s understanding of “feng shui.” The term, which translates directly as “wind water,” refers to the Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing the human being with his surrounding environment. In fact, claims Mr. Liang, China’s reclamation efforts are improving the region’s feng shui.
Mr. Liang is the secretary general of a Taoism association in the central city of Xi’an.
China makes claims to almost all of the South China Sea and evidence continues to emerge showing massive construction of military-like facilities, including a runway, above one section of reef.
Mr. Russel’s feng shui comment marks a lighter take from a U.S. official that Chinese activities are unnecessarily raising tensions in the region. Chinese building is unsettling both to the U.S. — which actively patrols the South China Sea’s busy shipping lanes – as well as to China’s neighbors making competing territorial claims, including Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines.
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