The Feng Shui Story

1990

A True Story

Written 2019* 802 Words* By Howard Yasgar

In the 1990’s, my company was manufacturing marine parts in Miami Florida.

It didn’t take us long before we realized that if I wanted to remain competitive, I would have to start making parts overseas.

So, we needed to find an overseas manufacturer that had lower costs than we did.

I thought we could start looking at the country of Taiwan first, because at the time they were aggressively

looking for U.S. business.

Every year, my company closed for the Christmas holidays, so that gave my wife and I the opportunity to go to Taiwan and look for a company to work with us.

On the first day my wife and I arrived in Taiwan, as soon as we checked in to our hotel room, the telephone never stopped ringing.

The calls were all from agents, all calling with an offer to pick us up in a limousine and take us to the office of companies that they represented. Unfortunately, none of the people that called were in marine parts business.

So, instead of fooling around with all the agents, we started using a phone book and a local Taiwanese cab driver, named Eddie and we started looking everywhere.

After visiting quite a few companies, we finally found an interesting one, their name was “Paal”. And they were making all kinds of marine and military parts.

The two owners were Kiv Wang and his cousin Han Chen.

For me It was like a dream come true, because soon Paal was making all kinds of marine parts for us.

Then, after several years of our doing successful business with them they suggested that we team up and build a factory together in Taiwan.

Kiv’s intention was to have one entire floor of the new factory dedicated to manufacturing marine parts for us.

Everything sounded good, so we told them to go ahead with the project.

That’s when Kiv Wang explained to me that there was an important Chinese custom called “Feng Shui” and it had to be used before they could decide on a final location for the factory.

He said to do this we needed to hire a Chinese Feng Shui expert.

Kiv said that once he found a potential location for the factory, he would send the Feng Shui guy there and he would inspect the area to determine if the factory would have good luck at that location.

I was anxious to get started building the factory, so I kept in contact weekly with Kiv by telephone.

Kiv told me that the Feng Shui guy had checked out the first location and said Bu-Hao, (no good), he didn’t like it.

A month later Kiv found another building location, but it also didn’t suite the Feng Shui guy either, he said Bu-Hao, (no good).

By the time a third location was being inspected, I was getting a little tired of waiting.

So that’s when I asked Kiv how much were we paying this Feng Shui guy?

Kiv said $500.00 U.S., for each inspection and he had already turned down two properties, so he said it had already cost us $1000.00.

I thought about it for a while, and it became obvious to me the Feng Shui guy was just a Taiwanese con man.

But I needed to be very careful of what I said, because Kiv and his cousin Han Chen really believed in this Feng Shui stuff.

So finally, I said, listen Kiv, the next location you send the Feng Shui guy to is also going to be no good.

However the following one will be good, and he will approve it.

Kiv said, “How do you know that”?

It’s easy I said, when the Feng Shui guy first visited your office, he sized you up as being a $2000.00 customer maximum.

Kiv laughed and he said you are crazy, that is not how our Chinese Feng Shui system works. By using Feng Shui, it will bring our company good luck.

About a month later he called me up to tell me the Feng Shui guy said the fourth location was good.

It was happening just as I had predicted, the Feng Shui guy had approved the fourth location and collected a total of $2000.00 for his services.

*Foot Note*

Anyway, we never got to move into the new factory. The Paal Company went bankrupt due to an unfortunate situation with U.S. Customs, and they closed, and it all happened right while the new factory was being built.

It appears that the only guy that had good luck was the Feng Shui guy, he made $2000.00