Building a House in Việt Nam — Part 3
Feng Shui screwed me and I didn't even get kissed
This Substack is about life in Việt Nam from the viewpoint of a 10-year expat who spent his first 60 years in a low-context culture.
This is the third in a series about my experiences building a bespoke house in Dalat, which sits at about 1500m (~4900ft) in the Central Highlands.
If you haven’t yet read Part 1, click here. To read Part 2, click here.
During my first few years in Vietnam, I would occasionally ask, as tactfully as possible, why someone had something displayed or placed in their house that seemed incongruous. The answer was always,
Feng Shui.
Coming from the west, I’d heard of Feng Shui, but knew little of it. For anyone thinking of moving to Asia, and everyone who already lives here and knows little of it, I recommend learning at least the basics. ESPECIALLY if you’re thinking of building a house.
As I began writing this piece, I looked up the definition. In part, Wikipedia says Feng Shui,
claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment… and it has been described as a paradigmatic example of pseudoscience.
I especially like the last bit.
My opinion aside, it something many, many Asians fervently believe in.
My mother- and father-in-law, for example. Feng Shui is the reason given for the model of a 19th century sailing ship in our living room. I’ve also seen them in many other houses and offices. No one can tell me what it accomplishes or prevents, just “Feng Shui”.
I got the same answer when a HUGE wall-mounted mirror suddenly appeared in the kitchen just before we moved in: Feng Shui.
Neither of these were optional or even mentioned prior. They just appeared one day. Feng Shui says they’re necessary, so the in-laws had them installed. No discussion allowed.
Feng Shui was also the reason given by my wife for moving the bed 90˚ to an adjoining wall while I was out of town, instead of where my bedroom design called for it to sit. Her friend told her that based on my birth year, I would sleep better if the bed was in the new location. When I asked “What about your sleep?”, she said it wouldn’t make a difference in how she slept. Seven months later, I realized she was right, it didn’t make a difference in how well I slept. I moved the bed back and, somehow, I sleep much better now.
“We will DIE!”
As revealed in Part 1, my in-laws gifted us the land and the house we tore down to build this one. This means they live with us. It also necessitated that my FIL and I agree before any changes are made to the plans or the build.
In theory.
About two months after the architect presented us with the construction drawings, after the ground and first floors were poured, and as the walls were going up, my in-laws took a copy of the drawings to a Feng Shui “expert". They told F and MIL that if they allowed the house to be built per the drawings, neither one of them would live the eight months it will take to finish the construction.
WTF??? The design is so deadly they’ll die before the house is even built?
My first question to my wife (who translates conversations between my in-laws and me, sometimes without actually talking to them) was “why didn't they consult the ‘expert’ BEFORE we started construction?”
Her answer was a version of,
Because they didn't.
More likely, it’s because they weren’t paying to build/change the house, so what’s the rush?
Also, as I realized much later and is detailed in my post on Family:
FIL is the patriarch over everyone related by blood or marriage.
Patriarchs in VN are despots/kings/authoritarians.
They answer to no one (except, maybe, Buddha; and not yet).
They do whatever the f*ck they want.
They think ONLY of themselves, and
Everyone else must think of the patriarch before themselves.
Recovering a bit (and not yet knowing what you just learned), I said,
“Okay, can you tell me why?
“It’s going to be very expensive to tear the stairs out and re-pour them.
“They’ve set the drainage system and poured the ground floor over it. They’ve
poured the first floor. It’s too late.”
She asked,
Do you want my parents to die?
To myself, “I need more information before I can answer that.”
The national pastime, emotional blackmail, won.
Again.
I already knew of Feng Shui’s influence because the rental house we were living in while we built this house had a balcony off our bedroom. One of the aunts told my wife the house had bad Feng Shui because the balcony door lined up perfectly with both the bedroom door and the bathroom door. According to her, Feng Shui says that three doors lining up is a BIG NO-NO. This meant:
We had to block the balcony door with a wardrobe.
The perfectly good mirror on the front of that wardrobe had to be covered by fabric because in feng shui, a mirror is the same as a door.
A second wardrobe couldn’t be where it was most convenient because the mirror on the front MUST NOT align with us lying in bed. I didn’t ask what Feng Shui says about mirrors on the ceiling.
No, I didn’t ask why we could just cover the mirror and not do the same with the door. Through this experience, I was already familiar with how seriously the family into which I married takes their Feng Shui.
With this in mind, I thought I was covering all contingencies when I gave each of the Feng Shui-conversant members of the extended family with the architect’s drawings long before construction began and asked,
"Is there anything in the design that we need to change to comply with/observe Feng Shui?"
I received a unanimous
No, everything’s fine.
Silly me.
Here is the architect's design for the ground floor that I gave to the family to get the Feng Shui stamp of approval:
Note that the karaoke room requested by my father-in-law (see Part 2) is on the far right; the stairs start climbing clockwise along the wall shared with the karaoke room; the kitchen is next to the living room; there is a full bath next to the elevator shaft and under the stairs.
According to the Feng Shui "expert", ANY one of these alone is enough to kill both of my in-laws before they even move in.
I'm neither joking nor exaggerating.
Of course, the excrement impacted the rotating cooling appliance because the newly-consulted “expert” said we had to redo two-thirds of the ground floor.
The drainage/sewage system was already in-place under the floor. We need to dig it up and move it under the kitchen.
Fire cannot cross water, so the stove can't be under or over any plumbing, even three floors up. The kitchen has to move to the karaoke room space ‘cause the first floor bathroom had to stay where it was. Don’t know why.
The ground floor bathroom has to go away because... who knows? Not me.
The stairs MUST go counter-clockwise to create "an upward energy vortex" distributing good fortune throughout the home. Since they are concrete and were already built to the first floor, they must be taken out and rebuilt going the other way.
In case anyone’s wondering, we’re still waiting for that good fortune vortex.
Now, the karaoke room is on the top floor next to the prayer room and we have this for the ground floor:
If only we'd known this BEFORE pouring the columns and the slab, the ground floor could've been laid out more efficiently. Taking out the now-formal dining room would’ve allowed us to enlarge both the living room and garage (to the left of the living room).
What was originally planned as the kitchen/dining area is now a huge dining area (we’d already bought the table, so we may as well use it) that as of today, 2-1/2 years after moving in, we only use as a path from the front entry to the rest of the house. We eat all meals at the huge kitchen center island table.
I didn’t know then that if you consult two Feng Shui “experts”, you will very likely get two significantly different opinions/results. Had I known, I would’ve insisted that we consult a couple more, though since FIL had already spoken, it probably wouldn't’ve mattered.
Feng Shui came up again a few times more during the build, but the changes were minor. Almost every measurement throughout a house is dictated by Feng Shui. They even make Feng Shui-compliant tape measures to assist. This is the back of a Việt Nam-purchased tape measure:
A window, door, or even a shelf, can be 45.8 cm (red), but not 45.0 cm (black).
I never believed my in-laws would die because of the house design. I did believe that if I refused to change the design, whatever their cause of death, even many years in the future, it would be blamed on me. It may still be.
I’m now ready to answer that earlier question.
When reviewing the life-saving changes with the architect, I emphasized the need to also make any as-of-yet-unasked-for changes so the drawings followed Feng Shui to the letter, avoiding future surprises.
He redid the drawings.
We tore up and repoured a chunk of the ground floor and the stairs.
Neither of my in-laws died.
The architect speaks English quite well, so I asked him why, knowing that three of the four adult occupants are Vietnamese and how much Vietnamese people care about these things (it’s on tape measures, ffs), he hadn’t followed Feng Shui from the jump.
You’re paying to build the house. You’re a westerner. Westerners don’t know feng shui, and if they do know it, they don’t care. I didn’t think your in-laws would make a big deal about it.
“Seriously? Have you met my father-in-law?”
He had.
He was right about two things, though. I didn’t know much about Feng Shui, and I didn’t care. To me, the level of harmony within a home is determined by the people who live there.
As it turns out, changing the design to follow Feng Shui was a waste of time and money; this house is a poster child for familial disharmony.
Damn Pseudoscience!
Really enjoying this series! It’s giving me a lot of “head’s ups” for when the time comes to build my own house in the next few years.
Haha, what a journey. I haven’t read your old blogs but it sounds like you jumped into a Vietnamese marriage feet first? Has she got you with the ‘your money is my money’ yet? And you’re really feeling that Confucian influence with ol’ ba.
Sorry if I got the wrong impression about your situation