Monday, July 29, 2013

Is the right bank of the river more auspicious?


Recently I read in some Chinese books and articles that the right bank of the river is better for living as it acummulates more auspicious energy (sheng qi 生气).  Right side of the river - this is the right from you when you look at the direction of the river flow.  An old feng shui saying goes: "The right bank of the river is auspicious, while the left bank of the river is ominous"  河右为吉,河左为凶.

Some relate this notion to the Earth rotation from west to east, which in the Northern hemisphere creates an offset force towards the right side of the flow of the river. The opposite statement will be valid for the Southern hemisphere, where the auspicious will be the left bank of the river.

It is considered that most of the cities situated on the right bank of a river prosper more. Given examples of such cities are Ottawa in Canada, Cairo in Egypt, Seoul in South Korea, Moscow in Russia, Hanoi in Vietnam, and also such cities in China as Nanjing, Luoyang, Xian, Lanzhou, Suzhou, Zhenzhou, Kaifeng, Chongqing and many others. Of course there are many cities that develop and prosper on the left bank of rivers as well and there are different factors contributing for this. 

In addition to this, in the old books of Tibetan medicine it is also pointed out that herbs growing on the right bank of the river have more healing properties.

It's interesting to note that the Russian scientist Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer (1792 - 1876) has examined that in the northern hemisphere, erosion occurs mostly on the right banks of rivers, and in the southern hemisphere - on the left banks. In geology this is known as Baer's law and Albert Einstain has explained this phenomenon in an article in 1926.