4/7/99 Wednesday – Woke up bright and early and it was off to the airport with my trusty guide Wei Min Du and our driver Mr. Wong. It was a long flight we were delayed on the tarmac for over an hour but at least no real turbulence to do me in this time.
I arrived at the hotel around 5pm Wednesday night and was hoping I’d made it before my roommate. I met two people on the way into the hotel that were a part of my group. The official start of the Feng Shui Study tour with Rodger Green kicks off tomorrow 4/8/99 at 10:00am, with the “getting started” workshop.
I had arrived first to the room. I picked the bed closest to the window and was waiting for my bags to come up. I heard something at the door, so I went to open it and there was Michele, my roommate from the UK. We got along splendidly right from the beginning and…right behind her were our bags. We grabbed them, tipped the guy and it wasn’t but a minute when Michele suggested we go to the bar and grab a drink. I don’t drink alcohol but love the tea. After the delay at the airport, and then being the very last one dropped off from the transport bus I thought…” Let’s Go!”
So, we sat and chatted for several hours occasionally looking around for other Westerners that might be part of our study tour but to no avail. We got deep in our conversations realizing we were the same age, both Fire Horses and had a lot in common.
We realized we both shared an interesting spiritual path and that we seemed to be learning and growing some of the same things in life. It was great and I knew right there this trip was going to be the trip of a lifetime. After a while we came back up to the room and started to somewhat unpack and get organized. I definitely brought too much shit.
8:55pm or 20:55 Hong Kong time – back in Hong Kong from Beijing drinking tea and listening to The New Radicals “You Get What You Give” on the radio. I had a wonderful time in Beijing and feel like I met a friend in Wei Min Du. I found out later that his last name is Du, like I said earlier it is sometimes custom to use people’s last names as their first in the Far East. Michele and I chatted some more and finally went to bed.
4/8/99 Thursday – I woke up quite early, around 4:00am Hong Kong time, and couldn’t fall back to sleep. Michele and I both woke up at 6:00am and went out for a long walk, about an hour, down to the harbor, all around and back again. I showered and we got ready for our first day of seminars. We met a few more people in the group at breakfast and grabbed some chairs in the front of the room. It was a long seminar with a lot of reviewing, at least for me, and I was excited to really get digging into the good stuff.
I We got out by 6:00pm and went and got ready to go to dinner at 7:00pm with Andre, a guy Michele knew from a Feng Shui seminar in Prague. He knew two other women from Germany that were part of our group and they all spoke German including Michele who was born there but raised in England. We decided to eat somewhere down by the harbor. We walked down and checked it out again…seems like there was so much to see there, you couldn’t take it all in no matter how many times you went.
There was a restaurant right on the water and it was Chinese. It was quite good but NOT cheap. Everyone was nice and we all got along well. After a late dinner we walked across the street to the Peninsula Hotel, very fancy, to the top where there was this very cool bar over-looking Honk Kong Harbor and Hong Kong Proper. We had several drinks there then all took a cab back to the hotel. Andre and Michele stopped at our hotel bar for a while longer, but I came up to bed and wrote in my journal and sent some postcards.
4/9/99 Friday – This morning Michele and I got up at 6:30am and took a walk down Nathan Road, the main drag in Kowloon and right by our hotel…and through the park to watch all the people practicing Martial Arts together like they do every morning…I mean hundreds of people. It was amazing to see…really cool. Then we got breakfast and ready for the 3-day seminar with Michael Chiang that starts today.
Michael Chiang is a well know Hong Kong based Feng Shui consultant and architect. He is the Executive Director of the Architectural firm LCT Associates, at least in 1999 he was. Michael has trained hundreds of Feng Shui students and teaches many aspects of Feng Shui applications. He is teaching an intensive 3-day course for us that include such subjects as the Zi Wei Astrology a topic that is practically hard to obtain information on in the West. Other subjects he will be discussing are from the realm of the Loyang School: Tai Yui Numbers, the Mystic Door and Vanishing Gar and the Yuen Hung.
From my Study Notes for those really interested in the principles of Feng Shui: 4/9/99
-He will be talking from the San Yuen (Yen) School = Three Cycles
Feng Shui – House; Mystic Door – Military Strategies; Tai Yu
-Ching Dynasty most used school is San Hop
-San Yuen school even more popular after the Ching Dynasty and most popular in the Far East
– We are towards the end of the cycle year of 7. In 2003 starts the next 20-year cycle which will be the cycle of the number “8” the most auspicious number in Chinese culture and Feng Shui.
– One Theory – Feng Shui is earthly and about the people living.
In spiritual realms the good Feng Shui are Temples, Churches, Museums and Graveyards.
– Chinese do not keep burial antiques in their homes – not good Feng Shui – represents the Dead not the Living…no things dead in the house including dried flowers (that part from me, Silks only)
-Chinese Astrology and Feng Shui are put into the mathematics category (someone tell my parents please) in the past both considered more philosophical than tangible.
4/10/99 Saturday 11:00pm – Night of Feng Shui Banquet and talk with Richard Tsui – I’m not feeling well some kind of stomach thing…I’ll write later.
