Following tradition, our 27th annual Feng Shui guide offers a light-hearted, alternative look at what's in the stars for you and the Hang Seng Index in 2021. The famed Bronze Ox from Beijing’s Summer Palace is our cover cow this year. She is a great regulator, and easily controls the flow of water and capital through Hong Kong.
Scroll down to view all manner of forecasts for the year ahead. We reveal your zodiac’s health, wealth, love and career stars, suggest good places to graze and how to mitigate negative energy, highlight lucky sectors, speculate on celebrity fortunes and, most importantly, predict the Hang Seng Index’s monthly cow path.
Known for their strength and majesty, oxen have assumed various forms in the human imagination, from feared gods to placid beasts of burden. Domesticated about 8,000 years ago, shortly after dogs and sheep, they have been independently brought into our world several times, from north Africa to southeast Asia and, more recently, to the Tibetan Plateau with the yak. Above, we feature some of the most famous bovines throughout history.
The last time the Ox showed its horns was in 2009 after the Global Financial Crisis. Once again, the faithful Ox has come to pull our favourite Earth Rooster, the Hang Seng Index, out of a slump. Summer and winter are the best periods, with gains and losses in other months.
In 2009, the Earth Ox led the Hang Seng up a meandering but steady cow path out of the Global Financial Crisis, generally following our predictions. During 1998, the Earth Rooster only diverged from our forecast in the final quarter. Our Rooster was a slow but consistent gainer in 1985 while the year of the Water Ox was a complete wipeout.
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In Feng Shui, the four pillars of destiny (the year, month, day and hour) comprise eight characters, hence the name Bazi. Each of the pillars is described by the two cycles that have characterised Chinese ways of telling time for the past three millennia. They are the 10 heavenly stems and the 12 earthly branches. When you place those two cycles side by side, they repeat at intervals of 60, which means you return to the beginning of the sequence. The new year, for Feng Shui purposes, is different from the Chinese New Year, which strictly follows the phases of the moon.
For 2021, the year begins at precisely 22:59 on 3 February, when the heavenly stem is xin 辛 and the earthly branch is chou 丑. That's achingly close to the 11pm changeover to the next combination of two-hourly stems and branches, so predictions are a little softer. Each stem and branch is associated with one of the five elements (water, fire, metal, wood and earth), and also with either yin or yang. That gives us the chart for the year, and we compare that against our Hang Seng Rooster’s natal chart for 24 November 1969.
In Chinese philosophy, the five elements provide a basic framework to understand relationships between everything. Each year, wood, fire, earth, metal and water dance around each other, some ruling throughout, others bursting out for a month or so. We apply Feng Shui theory to the markets by assigning certain industries to each element to determine their general trajectory.
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1901 1913 1925 1937 1949 1961 1973 1985 1997 2009
1902 1914 1926 1938 1950 1962 1974 1986 1998 2010
1903 1915 1927 1939 1951 1963 1975 1987 1999 2011
1904 1916 1928 1940 1952 1964 1976 1988 2000 2012
1905 1917 1929 1941 1953 1965 1977 1989 2001 2013
1906 1918 1930 1942 1954 1966 1978 1990 2002 2014
1907 1919 1931 1943 1955 1967 1979 1991 2003 2015
1908 1920 1932 1944 1956 1968 1980 1992 2004 2016
1909 1921 1933 1945 1957 1969 1981 1993 2005 2017
1910 1922 1934 1946 1958 1970 1982 1994 2006 2018
1911 1923 1935 1947 1959 1971 1983 1995 2007 2019
1912 1924 1936 1948 1960 1972 1984 1996 2008 2020
Feng Shui determines the points on the compass assigned to potential negative energies, or qi, in their various guises. The usual suspects are the Tai Sui, Tsui Po, San Sha and Wu Wang: intangible forces meandering across the Feng Shui firmament, so if the predictions are not in your favour, purchase a canister of reality and breathe deep . . . you'll be fine.
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Whether you are renting, buying, investing or developing, you'll be better off knowing what the stars have in mind for Hong Kong real estate.
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