The commonest error about the vermilion bird is to identify it with the fenghuang, the bird of Chinese art that English usually calls the phoenix. They come from different places. The fenghuang is an auspicious creature of omen and of imperial and bridal symbolism, appearing when a sage ruler is on the throne, and it has no fixed position in the sky. The vermilion bird is one quarter of the twenty eight lodges, defined by which stars it covers. In later painting they borrowed plumage from one another until the images became hard to tell apart, and the confusion is now more common than the distinction.
In siting practice the bird names the front. Facing out from a building, the vermilion bird position is the open ground ahead, ideally low, level and giving a long view, with water if possible. Manuals speak of it as the bright hall, the space in which influence gathers before entering, and a site with the ground rising immediately in front is treated as blocked.
The four emblems travelled together wherever the lodge system went. They are painted on the four walls of Korean tomb chambers of the Goguryeo period, and on the walls of two decorated tombs excavated in Japan, where the bird holds the southern wall. When the Japanese capital was laid out on the Chinese model, the great southern gate of the palace enclosure was named for the vermilion bird, and the name survives in Kyoto street names to this day.