Feng shui, Part 2
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.
Almost a year ago, I wrote how my in-laws’ belief in Feng shui completely fucked up the layout and construction of the house we built in 2020-2021.
For example, AFTER they’d approved the plans and AFTER construction started on the first floor (second floor to those in the US), they took a set of drawings to a fortune teller. This fortune teller told them that if we built the house according to the plans, they would both die before construction was complete.1 Because they believed this dreck, the changes demanded to save their lives resulted in what I am willing to bet is the only house on the whole planet that has a bathroom, but not on the lowest full-size level.
And that’s only one of a number of egregious examples.
The Ural
After shattering my knee in 2016, I decided to go to three wheels — a sidecar rig. Driving a “hack” is nothing like either riding a motorcycle or driving a car, so I took a class and got my three-wheel license in the US before returning to Việt Nam and buying a 1978 Ural from a guy in Saigon.
A couple years later, I decided to repaint it. I disassembled it, bought a sandblaster to strip it down to the metal, and had it professionally repainted. While taking it apart, I realized it needed rebuilt, too. I spent a couple years tracking down NOS2 parts in Russia, Poland, the US, and Việt Nam. Then I had issues with my knee revisions (yes, plural) and life in general just sorta went on with no real progress on the rebuild. The carcass is under the cover and most of the parts/pieces are in translucent plastic bins stacked up in the corner of the garage.
As of this week, we’ve lived in this house for four and one-half years. Since the day we moved in, my mostly disassembled Ural motorcycle has been sitting on its lift, in the garage, covered by old white fitted bedsheets — partially to hide them from view, and partially to keep them clean(er).
Yes, I know. Bikes are meant to be ridden, not taken apart and stuffed into boxes.
Yes, I’m embarrassed that it’s been so long. The next thing to reassemble is the front wheel/forks and, honestly, I’m very hesitant3, even though I took lots of photos as I was disassembling. About six months ago, I reached out to a mechanic I know here in town, but I never followed-up to ask him if he’d help me with the rebuild.
A couple weeks ago I promised myself that I will reach out to him as soon as H and I return from our rescheduled trip to the US4.
The Root of All Our Problems?
Until this past Tuesday, H’s mom was silent on the issue of the covered Ural since she approved the white fitted sheet covering right after we first moved in. Then I got this message from her on Zalo, the ubiquitous-in-Việt Nam messaging app:
Yeah, I can’t read it, either, so here’s the English translation:
1. In terms of Feng shui: The gate is the “mouth of the house” – the place to welcome vitality and fortune.
The gate and front yard are the mouth of the house; the place to welcome good energy – luck – money – noble people into the house.
If you place an old, damaged, or incomplete object (like a motorbike being assembled), it will:
Prevent good energy from entering the house
Symbolize unfinished, deadlocked, and troubled work – health – family
A white cloth is even more taboo:
The color white (especially pure white as you described) symbolizes mourning – coldness – separation.
Looking at it causes a feeling of gloom, bad luck, and negative energy gathering in front of the door.
In short:
That object can be a sign of negative energy – unintentionally creating negative energy for the house itself.
Now, after 232 weeks, the white coverings — exacerbated, no doubt, by the motorbike under assembly that they hide — are suddenly blocking good energy and the cause of the “gloom, bad luck, and negative energy” that has entered the house.
Or maybe they’ve been doing these things all along?
Why the sudden change from “that’s okay” to it’s EVIL?
H’s grandma has never, in the 10 years I’ve known her, been “in good health”. For the past three weeks, she felt especially weak and her stomach was distended. After numerous visits to the local POS hospital and getting sent home with “constipation” and similar BS diagnoses, the family finally found a competent ultrasound technician. As soon as this technician saw her ultrasound, they said,
Get to the Saigon NOW and check into (a specific) hospital!
So they did.
Within hours of arriving by ambulance at the Saigon hospital’s ER, doctors diagnosed colorectal cancer. Initially, the treatment plan started with a colostomy, followed by six to twelve months of chemo to (hopefully) shrink the tumor. Then they will operate to remove it and undo the colostomy.
Fortunately, when they went in Friday afternoon to do the colostomy, they found that they were able to remove the tumor. Hopefully, pathology will soon report that they got it all. I’d post a photo of it, but I think it’d be nice to have a couple blood-free weeks here.
Feng fucking shui
In my experience, a large percentage of the Vietnamese people are what Westerners call superstitious. They believe in ghosts, Feng shui, “luck”, and that buying eels at the fish market and setting them free in the lake will facilitate positive response to their prayers. When I fell down the stairs a few weeks ago and tore my patellar tendon, it was — according to family members and friends — because I was “not lucky”.
My best guess is that one of grandma’s sisters who lives and breathes Feng shui blew the whistle this week. Though she’s been to the house many times and seen the offending sheets each time, there has to be “a reason” for the cancer.
According to this school of thought, grandma’s cancer was either caused or exacerbated, at least in part, by the white-covered, unassembled Ural taking up 30% of our garage.
Who knows, maybe they’re also behind my knee misfortunes and the disharmony in our house’.
The Solution
As I’ve taught my daughter from day one… “Pick your battles.”
As the t-shirt I bought my sister soon after she had twins 40+ years ago said,
If Momma Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy
I told H’s mom to, “Change the covers to whatever works for you and your family.”
Later that night, she went with faux Gucci.5
It’s not my taste, but what do I care what color or design sheet covers my hack?
Maybe now whomever/whatever my Feng shui faux pas offended will go fuck with someone else for a while. I sure hope so.
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I didn’t know that breaking the rules of Feng shui could kill you, but according to this one practitioner, they can.
New Old Stock — New parts that’ve been sitting on a shelf for many years
NOT a word people who know me would use in a description of me — until this.
Late August 2025
Someday I’m going to have to do a piece about how the Vietnamese people, like so many others, LOVE “designer” products, even when they know they’re fake.
You've got more patience than me. I've had plans change mid project but sheesh!
Anybody who's worked on a vehicle or any project with a lot of pieces has that same trepidation if they've been away from a
It for for a while. Also, no matter how many pictures you take, inevitably none of them will cover the installation of the hard to see, hard to reach part.
I wish you luck in your continuing efforts to not murder your in-laws.