The Geographer and the Fengshui Practitioner: so close and yet so far apart?

Fengshui deserves serious scrutiny from geographers. Fengshui has been a highly significant influence on the shaping of human environments in the Chinese cultural sphere for at least 4000 years. Efforts to eliminate it in the twentieth century, by Chinese governments intent on modernisation, have failed. Advice on fengshui is still eagerly sought today by families and businesses in Chinese communities, whether on the mainland, offshore or overseas. The first part of this paper briefly introduces fengshui. The second part applies Lefebvre's three modalities of space to the time-space manipulations and outcomes of the operation of fengshui. The third part explores what fengshui offers a postmodern world, concentrating on (a) the nature of the 'harmony' it seeks to establish between people and nature; (b) the nature of fengshui's time-universe; and (c) the extent to which fengshui's goals of time-space harmony offer a framework for approaching sustainable development.