Royal Academic Institute

My Feng Shui researches 17 - Master Lai Bo Yi 賴布衣

In the Feng Shui history, there were four famous masters; we called it Yeung, Tseng, Liu and Lai 楊曾廖賴. If you don’t know who they are and what kind of knowledge they left for us, then you are not getting into the door yet.


Compared with the others three masters, Master Lai is the one who are more popular and well known by the public. His stories were spread out and filmed as a movie.

Once the name became famous, many people would use it as a promotion tool to attract more people for their own benefit.

Such as a temple in Canton, its name called, “Dragon mother temple龍母廟” was also using Lai Bo Yi’s 賴布衣name to create its legend.



Dragon mother temple was built for a memory of a lady, Miss Wan溫; in Qin秦 dynasty that she picked up 5 stones on the river and the stones born as 5 dragons later. These 5 dragons became as Miss Wan’s children and helping her to solve the flooding problem in that area. The local people call her as “Dragon mother”. The local people wanted to recognize her and her children’s contribution, therefore they did a fund raising after she died to built this temple and hoped her spirit continue to protect them out of flooding. This temple was built on the stone that everyday Miss Wan sat to play with her children (dragons) when she was alive.

One day Master Lai Bo Yi 賴布衣was tracing the dragon to there, he found the dragon point was right on the stone there, and he put a coin under the stone to mark the dragon point for his own grave. Unfortunately it was discovered by Miss Wan, she put her hair needle in the middle square hole of the coin.

When the day Master Lai Bo Yi 賴布衣was returned back, Miss Wan stopped him to finish his grave. They had an argument about the land belonged to who? Both of them could not be compromised. It ended with the judgement by the village old men. The final result was won by Miss Wan. The temple was built right on that stone after Miss Wan died.

Although it has a very attractive story for the temple but I don’t think it was true because Master Lai Bo Yi 賴布衣was born in Sung宋 dynasty, he never had a chance to meet Miss Wan and fought with her about this dragon point. I guess the people created this legend were not considered about which dynasty they were! Otherwise they would not make this mistake.

If you are a careless learner and fully accept the entire story you heard without doing research, you will get a wrong concept to learn Master Lai’s Feng Shui from this temple.

Although there is no way that Master Lai 賴布衣would connect with this temple, but you still have a chance to learn some interesting phenomenon in this temple: - this temple is closed to the river, every time when the flooding happened on the river, the flooding would stop in front of the temple. All the dusts were washed out after the flooding.



The other phenomenon is the Dragon mother gives more blessing for her believers who are coming from other cities. The local people are poorer. If you can base on your Feng Shui knowledge to explain these phenomenons, you might get into the right track, otherwise something wrong with your learning.



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