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What Is the Evidence for the Incorporation of the Principles Of What is the evidence for the incorporation of the principles of feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape of the Chinese camp in Bright, Victoria? ARC3HAA © Caroline Seawright 2013 http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/ARC3HAA.html © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp The remains of an 1859 Chinese camp site have been identified at Bright in north-east Victoria (Bannear 1997; Kaufman & Swift 1997, p. 2). The layout of the archaeological and historic remains of this Chinese site in Victoria suggests that the social practice of feng shui was implemented, as found elsewhere in Australia (Stankowski 2000, p. 3; Smith 2006, p. i). The extent to which the site conforms to the principles of feng shui will also be explored, focusing on culturally conceived, conceptualised and ideational landscape use. Feng shui 風水 (‘wind water’) is the 2,500 year old art of positioning human settlements on the landscape in accordance with Chinese philosophy (Stankowski 2000, p. 10; Skinner 2011, pp. 11- 14). According to the Form School of feng shui, good locations are found on a gentle slope which receives mild breezes, with a curving waterway to the south, and large hills to the north (Hardesty 2003, p. 91; Skinner 2011, pp. 42, 57-58 & 84; Figure 1). The Compass School is another feng shui technique which uses the luo pan, a special compass, to calculate a favourable position based on time and space (Skinner 2011, pp. 81, 137-140). In this report I investigate whether the Chinese camp adhered to these principles. Figure 1: (left) Topographic model of a good feng shui location: high, protective hills to the north, open land and a river to the south, with lower medium hills to the east, and low hills to the west (Skinner 2011, p. 59). 2 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Landscape People transform landscape from a natural setting into a cultural environment (Hardesty 2003 p. 81; Knapp & Ashmore 1999, pp. 10-13). The Chinese camp was a physical construction which originally comprised miners’ huts, a bootmaker, cookshops, stores, a hotel, joss houses (folk temples), a Presbyterian church, opium dens, gambling and lottery houses, and a Chinese circus (Kaufman & Swift 1997, p. 2 & 5; Figures 2 & 3). The Form School provides a conceptualised landscape for its Chinese inhabitants, whereby surrounding landforms are ascribed one of the four celestial animals in Chinese astronomy (Skinner 2011, pp. 21 & 58). It also offers an ideational landscape relating to the flow of qi 氣 (energy) which can be harnessed in various ways (Skinner 2011, pp. 26-31). Whilst feng shui utilisation is similar for living settlements and cemeteries, the latter is outside the scope of this essay (Abraham & Wegars 2003, p. 61; Smith 2006, p. 61-62; Wegars 2003, p. 77). Feng shui is thus a combination of physically, ideationally, and conceptually- created landscape types, appropriate for archaeological study. Figure 2: An undated photograph of a Joss House at Bright Chinese camp (Bannear 1997, p. 11) 3 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Figure 3: A 1900-1930s photograph of the Joss House on the left, with a shrine to the earth deity on the right (Bagnall 2013, p. 9; Brunner 2013, pers. comm., 8 September) 4 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp One change to the cultural landscape was the way in which the Chinese mining sites were patterned. These sites, worked by migrant labour forces, were organised into districts, each having a centralised location which provided for the spiritual and physical needs of the miners (Lawrence & Davies 2011, p. 231; Smith, 2006 pp. 1-2). Where the local environment has been shown to restrict the application of this pattern, some traditional Chinese elements were retained (Hardesty 2003, p. 91), including the use of feng shui. As Bright was one of these major centres, a feng shui master would have been hired by the wealthy merchant in charge of the area to ensure good qi for the site (Chung 2005, p. 607; Teather & Chow 2000, p. 311). The master made the alien Australian surroundings recognisable by providing the surrounding landscape with ideational and conceptual aspects familiar to the miners (Chung 2005, p. 602). Form School Traditionally, a feng shui master would first have investigated the topographic layout of the area, before suggesting the best location of a camp. However, historic records indicate that the location at Bright had already been designated in July 1859 by Warden Dowling, who was then in charge of the district, after the April 1859 anti-Chinese riots (Argus 29 April 1859, p. 6; Kaufman & Swift 1997, p. 2). The chosen location for the largest Chinese settlement in the district is situated in the Ovens Valley in the Victorian Alps (Figures 4-8). The settlement spreads south-west of the Ovens River and Morses Creek, and was separated from the European section of Bright to the west by the Creek, which flows southeast before eventually heading to the south (Kaufman & Swift 1997, p. 3). To the north is Mount Porepunkah, the closest mountain to the township (Figure 5). Despite the European layout and building style (Kaufman & 5 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Swift 1997, p. 5), the landforms surrounding the camp would have been quite important to both the Chinese merchants and miners of the area as waterways and mountains are important to the Form School of feng shui, providing conceptualised landscape relating to the four celestial animals of Chinese astronomy. Figure 4: Topographic map of the Bright area (Digital Atlas 2012) 6 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp In the Form School, the landscape requires mountains of specific shape, along with gently flowing water, in a specific pattern to be considered ideal (Figure 5). The feng shui “armchair” principle involves have large ‘black tortoise’ mountains to the north, smaller ‘azure dragon’ mountains to the east, low ‘white tiger’ mountains to the west, and an open ‘vermillion phoenix’ space with a waterway to the south (Skinner 2011, p. 43; Figures 5 & 6). This pattern was believed to support a site from behind, and provide an aesthetically pleasing area to the front (Skinner 2011, p. 50; Teather & Chow, p. 321). Such auspicious patterns have been seen at a number of sites throughout the Australian and New Zealand goldfields (Groves 2011, p. 65; Jack 1993, p. 135; Lawrence & Davies 2011, p. 173). NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data (via Google Earth) has been used to provide a three-dimensional topographic model of Bright. A ‘black tortoise’ mountain in the form of Mount Porepunkah is present in the north (Figure 7). Mount Buffalo National Park forms an ‘azure dragon’ to the west (Figure 8), and the Mount Bogong area a ‘white tiger’ to the east (Figure 9). Morses Creek flows down from the Ovens River to create the ‘vermillion phoenix’ to the south of the camp (Figure 10). Based on these features, the Bright Chinese camp conforms to the Form School’s conceptual “armchair” patterning. 7 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Figure 5: An ideal conceptual and topographic landscape of feng shui (Skinner 2011, p. 59) 8 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Figure 6: Topographic map of the Bright area with the four celestial animals (Brunner 2013 pers. comm., 8 September; Digital Atlas 2012) 9 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Figure 7: Mount Porepunkah to the North of the site (Google Earth 7.1.1.1888 2013) Figure 8: Mount Buffalo National Park to the West of the site (Google Earth 7.1.1.1888 2013) 10 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Figure 9: Mount Bogong area to the East of the site (Google Earth 7.1.1.1888 2013) Figure 10: Mount Selwyn area to the South of the site (Google Earth 7.1.1.1888 2013) 11 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Compass School After a good Form School location is identified, a feng shui master can identify the flow of qi, and select the best method for harnessing positive energy, providing a site with an ideational map. An accurate compass reading could provide the master with a representation of how qi could flow through a landscape over time (Teather & Chow, p. 320). Andrew Lewis (2013 pers. comm., 17 September) of Geoscience Australia confirmed that the declination for Bright was +7.01 (BGS1850 model). Magnetic north has been adjusted to take this declination into account when considering the orientation of the Chinese camp during its historic period (Figures 11-12). Figure 11: The nucleus of the 1880s Bright Chinese camp, aligned along an east-west axis (after Kaufman & Swift 1997, p. 3) 12 © Caroline Seawright Feng shui in the ideational and conceptual landscape: Bright Chinese camp Figure 12: The layout of the 1880s Bright Chinese camp overlayed on a Google Map of Bright (Google Maps 2013; after Kaufman & Swift 1997, p. 3) The lo shu 洛書 diagram (Table 1), an algorithm relating to both time and space, can be used to generate a numerical ideational map of the area. The nine numbers used have different symbolic meanings relating to compass directions, the local qi and the five elements of Chinese philosophy (Skinner 2011, p.
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