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Feng shui and satellite technology may at first glance seem unrelated, but for one Hongkonger they are one and the same.

Thomas Lee, a geographic information systems (GIS) and IT consultant, occasional lecturer and fung shui master, is fascinated by the similarities between  ancient geomancy - forecasting the future using geography - and its modern equivalent.

Mr Lee began looking into fung shui after completing a master's degree in GIS in the late 1980s.

'I wanted to go on and do a Phd, but I was finding the technology-based approach to be very hollow - it had no philosophy behind it,' he says.

After taking a fung shui course with an eye to including it in his thesis, he was hooked.

'I never started the Phd,' he says, describing how he eventually went on to complete the graveyard location course, the most important qualification a fung shui master can obtain. A well-situated grave keeps ancestral ghosts happy and bestows good luck on a family.

While today we use satellite photography, global positioning systems and high-powered computers to generate models of the world in which we live, fung shui masters use the concept of yin and yang, and a good deal of footwork, to do the same.

'The Chinese tried to model the world using this binary system of yin and yang,' Mr Lee says. He explains yang was generally associated with flat, open land and water, while yin referred to hills, buildings and people.

'As a general concept the idea is to look for somewhere where there is a balance of yin and yang energy, so you have a bit of hill and a bit of flat.

'In GIS, what we are expected to do is analyse problems regarding geographic information using a digital map.'

In much the same way that feng shui has been used to locate gravesites, 'one of GIS's main applications is site selection'.

This is done by analysing information about population distribution, terrain and infrastructure to determine the best outcome. The principles of fung shui, while still expressed in the language of pre-industrial times, can be reinterpreted to suit the demands of the modern world, he says.

Its five core elements - metal, wood, fire, water and earth - all have modern equivalents.

'Water, for instance, implies something like a transportation network. It was easier to travel somewhere by boat than it was to go by horse or foot, so if we have a highway near our house, or the MTR, we can travel easier ... it's the same logic,' Mr Lee says.

'I wanted to go on and do a Phd, but I was finding the technology-based approach to be very hollow - it had no philosophy'



Finding yin and yang in a satellite era