A superstitious woman who believed her bad luck and health were caused by poor feng shui is accused of having caused multiple car accidents in her Shanghai neighbourhood by adjusting the position of a traffic mirror. According to the unnamed woman’s husband, she had suffered “bad luck and health” as of late, so she called a feng shui expert to see if something could be improved.
The expert said that the traffic mirror that had been installed opposite the woman’s house more than a decade before was the cause of her problems. The woman and her husband felt that it was like a “demon-revealing mirror”, an item in Chinese mythology that could reveal the true identity of a demon disguised as a human.
“We are no demons. We are not happy having a demon-revealing mirror pointing at us,” the woman’s husband said, adding that his wife had repeatedly adjusted the mirror so that it didn’t face their house anymore.
Although the feng-shui obsessed woman insisted that nobody used the traffic mirror anyway, neighbours disagreed, so the property management company decided to settle the matter by installing another mirror on the opposite side of the road. This way, drivers could see around the bend in the road and the woman’s feng shui wasn’t affected.
The woman agreed with this compromise at first, but as soon as she felt that her luck had changed for the worse, she started messing with the mirrors again. The neighbourhood committee tried to reason with her, but she insisted that the mirrors affected her feng shui, bringing her bad luck. In the end, the police were notified, and officers warned the woman that she could be held responsible for traffic accidents caused by them moving the mirrors.
Feng shui, which means wind and water, is a traditional form of geomancy focusing on spatial arrangement and orientation in relation to the flow of energy (chi). Believers in feng shui are convinced that the way one arranges objects affects one’s success, health, and happiness
