The essence of Kanyu in Feng Shui and the tombs of the Chinese Emperors

Abstract

Chinese geomancy is also known as Feng Shui. It is an ancient philosophical ideological system that uses interdisciplinary knowledge such as astronomy, geography, and anthropology to realize the “harmony between heaven and human”. At present, Chinese geomancy mainly focuses on urban construction, large-scale architecture, interior design, and applied research in the fields of ecological environment, but there is very little discussion on the location of the tomb of the ancient emperors. Based on the concept of Kanyu and the principles of Chinese geomancy,this article compares the location of the tombs in the Emperor Valley in ancient China and the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, combined with reflections on representational space in Eliade, Heidegger, Bachelard, and Lefebvre. It shows that the employment of Kanyu in the layout of the Emperors Tombs, there is a unity of ‘the representation of space’ with ‘representational space’.