Feng shui, literally "wind and water", is the Chinese art of arranging the built and natural environment so as to harmonize with the flow of qi, the vital energy, and thereby to secure health, prosperity, and good fortune. Rooted in classical Chinese cosmology, the interplay of yin and yang, the five phases (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), the eight trigrams of the I Ching, and the directional symbolism of the compass, it teaches that the placement and orientation of a dwelling, a grave, furniture, doors, and water features, and their relation to the surrounding landforms, either gathers and circulates beneficial qi or lets it stagnate or rush away. It has two great domains: the siting of the dwellings of the living (homes, cities, workplaces) and, historically at least as important, the siting of the graves of the ancestors (yin feng shui), on the belief that a well-placed tomb brings fortune to descendants, linking the practice intimately to Chinese ancestor veneration. Traditional feng shui masters used the elaborate luopan compass and a body of competing "schools" (the Form school reading the shapes of the land, the Compass school reading directions and stars).
Long central to Chinese life and exported across East Asia, feng shui has in recent decades become a global phenomenon in interior design and "wellness." It is best understood as a traditional cosmological and aesthetic system for relating human dwelling to environment, deeply embedded in Chinese metaphysics rather than framed in the terms of modern physics.