What is Feng Shui? The English missionary and scholar E. J. Eitel received the answer to this question: wind and water. The wind you cannot grasp, the water you cannot grasp. Eitel did not like this answer. He studied Feng Shui for decades in China and left behind the only detailed record of the Chinese doctrine of harmony between man and nature that emerged when China was still dominated by it. His text was published in New York in 1873. John Michell, the well-known English researcher and author, writes in his preface to it: "Feng Shui was regarded as the only means of establishing a settled civilization with a harmonious relationship between man and his natural surroundings. How this was achieved is of obvious interest in a time that is increasingly suffering from the problems of pollution, rural exodus, discontent and madness. Feng Shui was built on eternal principles, in response to an eternal situation. Human life on earth, however customs and ideas may change, is subject to constant laws and restrictions. Feng Shui was credited with the beauty and fertility of the Chinese landscape, as well as the dense population and its peaceful well-being. The initiates were knowledgeable in astronomy, numbers and many other sciences, which they applied in conjunction with their philosophy of transmigration and their knowledge of the essential forces of nature on which all life depends. E. J. Eitel's work is more than the basis of his successors' reflections, just as Feng Shui is more than the original form of geomancy. Here views of life collide. The author unintentionally provides insights into the thinking of his epoch, in which many of today's prevailing misconceptions took on concrete forms. This is the only German-language edition of his book, illustrated in the new edition with steel engravings from 1843 by Thomas Allom and photographs by Ernst Boerschmann, taken between 1906 and 1909.