
Feng Shui
Chinese Geomancy, Qi Landscape Theory, and Victorian Sinology in Nineteenth-Century China
Ernest J. Eitel(Author)
Sharp Ink (Publisher)
Published on 15. May 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
40 pages
978-80-283-7604-8 (ISBN)
Description
Ernest J. Eitel's Feng Shui, originally published as Feng-Shui; or, The Rudiments of Natural Science in China, is one of the earliest extended English-language attempts to explain the cosmological art of siting graves, houses, and cities. Written in a lucid Victorian expository style, it translates Chinese geomantic ideas-qi, directional forces, landscape forms, and the compass-into the categories of nineteenth-century "natural science," while also revealing the limits and biases of missionary scholarship. The book belongs to the formative literature of Western sinology, where observation, translation, and cultural judgment often coexist uneasily. Eitel was a German-born Protestant missionary, linguist, and colonial official in Hong Kong, deeply engaged with Chinese language, religion, and popular practice. His work emerged from sustained contact with Cantonese society and from the practical need of Europeans in China to understand customs that shaped architecture, burial, and public life. His missionary perspective often made him critical of feng shui, yet his philological care preserved valuable descriptions of its intellectual structure. This book is recommended to readers interested in Chinese cosmology, colonial knowledge, religious encounter, and the history of anthropology. Read critically, it remains a fascinating document: both a study of feng shui and a record of how the West first tried to interpret it.
More details
Language
English
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 3 mm
Weight
75 gr
ISBN-13
978-80-283-7604-8 (9788028376048)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ernst Johann Eitel (1838 - 1908) was a German-born Protestant who became a notable missionary in China and civil servant in British Hong Kong, where he served as Inspector of Schools from 1879 to 1896.