Over the past five thousand years, the Chinese have developed a unique art that harmonizes living conditions, known as Feng Shui. At the end of 2006, when a Shanghai scholar applied to have Feng Shui considered as a local intangible cultural heritage, it gave Feng Shui masters and skeptics fertile ground for debate.

According to Zhang Liangren, Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Life Aesthetics Association, Feng Shui emphasizes the harmonious coexistence of man and environment. "It is a discipline of geography, architecture, ethics and prophecy based on the Taoist principle that the earth, sky and man are part of one whole," said Zhang-and he wants it recognized.

Yet scarcely one month after his application, Zhang announced that he had withdrawn his involvement in Feng Shui's heritage status bid. He said he had been under pressure from the Shanghai Social Sciences Association, of which his own association is a member, to stop the application process. The underlying notion was that Feng Shui is unscientific and steeped in superstition.

Although the Chinese Government has never officially banned Feng Shui, it is defined in Chinese contemporary dictionaries as a "superstitious belief from ancient China."

Zhang's application, which he has been working on for years, stated, "Feng Shui is a branch of science, rather than superstition." Yet many professors and scholars were quick to slam this notion. Gu Xiaoming, a professor with the Department of History at Fudan University, warned people to distinguish between superstition and science contained in Feng Shui. Particularly in modern times, some people are using Feng Shui to promote superstition for a quick buck, he said.

Professor Hu Guangwei, Deputy Director of the Sociological Studies Institute of Sichuan Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, said Feng Shui's mysticism involves both science and superstition and it is hard to define which part belongs to which category. If wrongly used, according to Hu, it can dupe people genuinely convinced it is a science into activities that are tainted with superstition.

Su Yizhong, a researcher with the Shanghai Municipal Center for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritages, attributed the failure of Zhang's initiative to the fact that Feng Shui lacks something that represents the essence of its value. Feng Shui has long been part of the lives of Chinese and could be regarded as a step of humankind in the process of understanding nature. Yet its very vagueness is its own enemy in this case, said Su, as it is difficult to quantify or describe. This makes Feng Shui difficult to successfully apply for intangible heritage status.

In addition to the superstition vs. science debate, Zhang is also worried that China will lose out claiming Feng Shui as homegrown, based on other countries having registered China's traditional "dragon boat memorial ceremony" as their own. Zhang, along with supporting experts, agreed that Feng Shui, the Dragon Boat Festival and Kunqu Opera (a Chinese stage art form similar to Peking Opera) all qualify as intangible cultural heritage.

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