In 2013, a water-taming mythical beast was unearthed at the construction site of Sichuan Grand Theater. The subsequent torrential floods inevitably recalled the most profound eight-character warning from the feng shui circle of Wanshou Mountain in Beijing: "If you don't disturb me, I won't disturb you."
That feng shui can nourish or kill is no exaggeration. From the dragon-shaped relief "Dragon Pillar" of the Shanghai overpass to the "Dragon-Locking Well" in Beixinqiao, from (haunted houses) to ominous sites across the country—feng shui permeates everything, from national projects to civilian residences. The small Beiding Niangniang Temple even forced the Olympic Bird's Nest to shift its location by 100 meters. Was it the power of the gods?
As a yin-yang feng shui master who has traveled across China, I shall recount the spiritual and strange tales of feng shui over the past century...
My name is Zhang Dabao, originally from Shandong. My grandfather's generation migrated to the northeast during the Chuang Guandong (the mass migration to northeastern China) and settled in Tiexi District, Shenyang.
In 2003, when I was 15 and the TV series Chuang Guandong hadn't aired yet, I learned about my grandfather's glorious history from my father. I bought two bottles of Laobaigan liquor and two catties of mantis shrimp, then headed to my grandfather's house.
After my grandfather and I drank half a catty of wine, he opened up.
He said he was dug out of a pit of corpses. When mentioning this, he wiped his turbid eyes, and it seemed to remind him of something sad. I quickly apologized and tried to persuade him to stop, but he waved his hand. "It's okay. After all these years, some things are better told than taken to the grave."
I chided him for talking nonsense, praising him as one of the healthiest elders in the community, even teasing that he might have a twilight romance. This earned me a tap on the head with his pipe, which I rubbed while grinning.
"Just take it as a story," my grandfather sighed, downing another cup of wine. And so I heard a story that would change my life...Summer 1943: The Horror by the Wei RiverIn the summer of 1943, the western Shandong region hadn't seen a drop of rain for three months. Riverbeds dried up, land cracked, and people struggled to survive. At the time, not all Japanese Kwantung Army forces had withdrawn.
Grandfather said a local mineral prospector claimed to have found alluvial gold in the lower reaches of the Wei River. In the final stage of resource plunder, the Japanese soldiers wouldn't miss this opportunity. They ordered Ergouzi (a collaborationist) to recruit laborers from the village with a daily wage of nine steamed buns—a lifeline for the drought-stricken people of western Shandong.
By morning, all able-bodied men in the village had gathered by the river. Ergouzi, sporting a collaborationist hairstyle, ordered them to dig until they found gravel. Nearly a hundred people worked day and night, but long-term starvation left them weak, and many fainted. The collaborationists would drag the unconscious away, not only withholding food but also hurling insults.
Although my great-grandfather was the village chief, he was powerless against the overbearing collaborationists. On the third day at noon, a strange thing happened: someone shouted that they'd unearthed a stone slab carved with a dragon. Villagers and Japanese soldiers swarmed around it. The dragon on the slab was exquisitely carved, with fist-sized dragon eyes inlaid with jade. At first glance, the eerie green light made the eyes seem ready to devour people.
The Japanese soldiers exclaimed "Yosh!" three times and ordered the villagers to excavate the coffin. With Shandong's profound cultural heritage, its funeral customs were well-developed, and people often encountered coffins—even those driven to banditry by hunger—so it wasn't entirely surprising.
But just as they were about to start, an old laborer ran over, threw himself on the coffin board, and cried out: "No! This coffin must not be dug!"
"Don't spout nonsense! Colonel Kawasaki of the Imperial Army is here. What can't be dug?" the captain of the military police barked.
The old man kowtowed and pleaded, saying the coffin was no ordinary one: it was a stone coffin from the Warring States Period, used to suppress the river's qi (vital energy). It imprisoned the Dragon King of the Wei River, and anyone who disturbed it would court disaster.
To show loyalty to the Japanese, the collaborationists and the military police captain struck the old man with a rifle butt, then tied him up, sneering that even the Dragon King must obey the Emperor.
Under the pressure of survival, others dared not speak up and resumed work. But the moment the first pickaxe struck, a (strange event) occurred: a strong earthquake shook the coffin's vicinity, and then—after three months of drought—it rained in western Shandong.
The villagers rejoiced, taking it as an auspicious omen. By afternoon, the coffin's surface was fully exposed: an enormous stone coffin, seven to eight meters wide and over 20 meters long, with only the top visible.
That night, great-grandfather returned home with steamed buns. On a whim, he took one and went out to give it to the old man who'd been beaten that day. The old man, also surnamed Zhang, was the village fortune-teller. With a steamed bun and a bowl of cold water, great-grandfather pulled Old Man Zhang back from the brink of death.
The next morning, Old Man Zhang blocked great-grandfather's door, warning that the village would face disaster and urging him to flee. But great-grandfather dismissed it, saying, "After years of suffering under the Japanese, what worse could happen?" His attachment to his homeland made him choose to endure.
Seeing great-grandfather's stubbornness, Old Man Zhang could only pick up six thumb-sized stones from the ground and give one to each of great-grandfather's six brothers, urging them never to part with the stones.
Work proceeded as normal. Dozens of people dug a pit 2 meters deep and 40 meters in diameter around the coffin, but its bottom remained invisible.
At noon, someone suddenly screamed that blood was seeping from the coffin. Terrified, people knelt and kowtowed. The horror was far from over: a dozen people let out agonized wails, and when the military police rushed over, the dozen had gone blind simultaneously. In an instant, five more people smashed their heads against the coffin like madmen, while the rest either lay wailing with sores all over their bodies or wandered about (in a daze), muttering to themselves as if their souls had been stolen.