Two Things That Break the Feng Shui of My Village

My village is in Guangdong. Everyone here shares the same surname — Liang. It's been that way for generations. But there are two things that are not allowed to happen inside the village: a birth, and a death. Both are considered breaking the feng shui.

A daughter who marries out cannot give birth in the village

My aunt married into our village. When she gave birth, she went to a hospital. The hospital is outside the village, so there was no problem.

But there is a rule in the village that was never written down: a daughter who marries out cannot come back to her parents' home to give birth inside the village.

It's not that she can't come back to stay. She can come back to wait for the birth. But once she is about to deliver, she must leave the village.

Why? The villagers won't explain it in big words. They only say one thing: it breaks the feng shui.

What they mean is: this child belongs to the husband's line, not to our village's line. If the child is born inside the village, it brings outside energy in. And later, if something bad happens to any family in the village, they might blame this family for it.

My uncle's mother-in-law lived in the village for half her life, but she was not a villager

My uncle's mother-in-law — my aunt's mother. She only had one daughter, my aunt. After my aunt married into our village and had children, she came to help take care of them.

She lived in our village for many years. She cooked, took care of the children, talked with the neighbors. In daily life, she was a villager.

But by the rules, she was not. Because she did not marry into our village, and her name is not in the family genealogy.

So when she grew old, and my uncle sensed she might pass away naturally — not from illness, but from old age — he immediately drove her to a house outside the village and waited for her to pass there.

It was not unfilial. It was that a person who is not a villager cannot leave the event of death inside the village. If she died in the village, it would also break the feng shui.

Feng shui is not superstition. It is a boundary.

These two events — one is birth, one is death. Both are about where a person comes from and where they go.

The villagers don't use words like "system" or "boundary." They only say "feng shui." But the meaning is the same:

• Who is a villager and who is not must be clear.
• What can come in and what cannot must be clear.

When it's clear, the village stays stable.

These rules are not talked about much today.

The hospital is outside the village. The crematorium is outside the village. Birth and death naturally happen outside now.

But the rules are still there. The older generation still remembers. They won't explain why. They only say one thing: that's how it was before. Break the feng shui, and you pay for it.