Travel
Set The Dragons Free
T. SHER SINGH
DAILY FIX
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
I remember when my parents were having their house built from scratch, back in Patna, when I was but a young boy.
My father had managed to whisk away for a few days a junior architect working on Le Corbusier’s mega-project in Punjab - Chandigarh - to help us configure the building plans.
I remember nosing around during their meetings and finding the discussions mighty peculiar … about things that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the construction of a building.
There was endless talk of the amount of sunlight that would pour into each room at different times of the day; over how cross-breezes would enter and leave the building, and which rooms they could be regulated through or cajoled out of, depending on whether it was summer time or winter.
I learnt later that there’s nothing strange about that exercise. I’m sure all designers and architects ask those questions. Well, take that entire concept, add some religion and a heavy dose of superstition, and you end up with the ayurvedic vastu school.
Or the Chinese concept of fung shui, literally “wind and water”.
If you’re building a structure in Hong Kong, for example, you’d better bring in a fung shui expert first. He or she will study the configuration of your plans and how they fit into the environment: the winds, the sun and moon, the planets, water, geography, etc. And then they will advise you where the doors and the windows go, which way the entrance should face, how high, how wide, etc.
Sitting on the Kowloon shore, on the north side of Victoria Harbour and overlooking Hong Kong, is the Regent Hotel complex. Sprawling but dignified, it lords over a wide-angled and unobstructed view of the island city.
The story goes that when the Regent was under construction, somebody realized that, through an oversight, no geomancer had been consulted on the fung shui of the structure. It could mean trouble: it could result in bad joss, the spirits or gods - one or more - could be displeased. Then, shucks, anything could happen.
Everybody in Hong Kong knows of the time when the Royal Hong Kong Police Force suddenly suffered an unexpected and severe drop in morale.
It was at the Wanchai Police Station. The year was 1973, say those who are old enough to remember.
New superintendent Larry Powers quickly summoned a fung shui expert. Who did some tests with his compass, and determined the problem: the slanting roof of a new building next door was creating bad joss and exposing the police station to negative omens.
The solution? Two old cannons were placed at the entrance and, guess what?
The two-horned monster which had hitherto been threatening the police never showed up again. (Our own police forces here in Canada, who are often reported suffering from inexplicable drops in morale, please take note.)
Only a few months later, bureaucrats in the local transport department suddenly started seeing ghosts on the premises.
Brian Wilson, a Briton - another one of those from the superior race that had been sent across the seas in hordes to govern the island - quickly organized a procession, upon the advice of a geomancer, of monks and nuns through the property on February 8, 1974. The problem was, of course, solved as a result.
So, getting back to the Regent on the Kowloon shore: a fung shui expert did some studies and yes, there was a problem.
A serious one.
You see, the city of Kowloon -- literally, the “nine dragons” -- sits on the water, and the Regent was perched at the very point where the nine dragons periodically came down from the surrounding hills for a bath.
Once the construction was completed, how would they get through to the water, since the concrete structure was right in their path? Nobody would even venture into guessing what could happen as a result. But one thing was certain: it wouldn’t be good.
Brilliant minds were hired to find a solution … particularly one not requiring the tearing down of what had already been built. And indeed, they proved their money’s worth.
The architect was asked to redesign the building, using glass. Lots and lots of glass. Everywhere.
You see, dragons cannot penetrate concrete. But they can go through glass with ease.
The result was your gain and mine: the Regent now offers one of the most exquisite and romantic man-made views you‘ll find anywhere.
The entrance to the hotel is, of course, now a stretch of glass. And so is the far side, which faces the water and the island of Hong Kong.
The water-side, where the dragons now exit, consists of a lobby and mezzanine contained, aquarium like, by a row of 40-foot (12 metre) high towers of glass, stretching almost as far as you can see within the building.
You walk into the lobby and a you approach the far side, the entire panorama of the glittering city unfolds before you.
The scene in the day is breath-taking. At night, it is unequalled.
It is like sitting in the observation deck of the Enterprise, spying unabashedly on an inter-galactic city that fills the entire horizon. It is a sight built by man, and approved by the gods, for romance.
The moral of the story is: if it is good for the dragons, it’s good for you. And it proves that fung shui works: after all, the Regent consistently gets rated one of the best hotels in the world.