寻龙Xunlong Form School
Pine trees silhouetted in thick fog on a rocky ridge

Zhang Guanyong张观勇

A lineage holder of the Tianxing school, the Celestial Star method of Lai Buyi. He has walked the great sites of China, imperial and clan alike, and he teaches the way he learned: not from books, from the ridge. Study with him and he takes you up every mountain.

The master walking a grassy ridge in fogAbove Sanliao village, spring 2026
School
Tianxing (Celestial Star) school, Jiangxi tradition. Landform first, then the stars. Lineage of Lai Buyi
Practising since
2006
Sites walked
The famous sites of China, from the Tang and Ming imperial tombs to the clan graves of Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong; more than 300 private readings in China, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Canada
Base
Ganzhou, Jiangxi
Languages
Mandarin, Hakka. English readings with a trained interpreter

How he learned

Master Zhang grew up in a village in Xingguo county where feng shui was not a profession but a thing the old men knew. His grandfather could name every hill from the doorstep and say which family's grave sat on which one, and why that family had done well. At sixteen he began following a local master, carrying the luopan and saying nothing, for three years. The master did not teach from books. He walked, and pointed, and asked questions, and the answers came or they did not.

The first site he was allowed to point on his own was a grave for a neighbour's family, in 2006. The master checked it, moved the stone two steps to the east, and told him why. He says that correction taught him more than the three years before it.

Book a readingStudy with him

Why he films

Feng shui has a trust problem, and it deserves it. Too many readings are given from a desk, by people who have never climbed the hill behind the house. Master Zhang began filming his site visits so that clients could see the reasoning, not just the verdict. If he says the dragon comes from the northwest, the camera shows the ridge. If he says the water leaves badly, you watch it leave. The videos became a library, then a course, then this school.

What he will not do

He does not sell objects to fix landform problems, because objects do not fix landform problems. He does not give readings he cannot defend on the ground. He does not promise outcomes. He tells families when a site is good, when it can be corrected, and when they should look elsewhere, and he would rather lose the job than the reputation.

Lineage

No one on the English-language feng shui market names a school or a founder. We do. This is where the method came from.

  1. Lai Buyi 赖布衣Lai Wenjun, Southern Song, twelfth century. Imperial geomancer and author of the Cuiguan Pian. Founder of the Tianxing school, which reads the land first and then sets it against the stars. One of the four founding masters of the Jiangxi school.
  2. The Tianxing school 天星派Handed down master to student for eight centuries in the hills of Jiangxi, on the mountain rather than in books.
  3. Zhang Guanyong 张观勇Lineage holder. Practising since 2006, teaching since 2018.

The method, in five words

The Tianxing school reads the land first, in the Form School's order. Only then does it look up.

龙DragonThe ridge that carries energy from the parent mountain. Is it alive, has it travelled, has it stopped?
砂SandThe hills around the site: backing, two arms, table. Do they hold the site without crowding it?
水WaterWhere it comes from, where it gathers, where it leaves. The water mouth decides more than people think.
穴SiteThe point where the dragon finishes and the ground gathers. Not chosen. Found.
向FacingThe bearing of the stone or the door, set with the luopan once everything else is known.

Then the sky: the twenty-four stars

Heaven answers the land, and the land answers heaven. On the Tianxing luopan each of the twenty-four mountains carries a star. Where the dragon comes from, and which way the stone faces, decide which stars a family sits under.

子天壘Heaven's Rampart
癸天道Heaven's Way
丑天廚Heaven's Kitchen
艮天市Heavenly Market
寅天棓Heaven's Staff
甲天苑Heaven's Park
卯天命Heaven's Mandate
乙天官Heaven's Office
辰天罡Heaven's Bar
巽太乙Great One
巳天屏Heaven's Screen
丙太微Supreme Subtlety
午天馬Heaven's Horse
丁天柱Heaven's Pillar
未天恒Heaven's Constant
坤天鉞Heaven's Axe
申天關Heaven's Gate
庚天橫Heaven's Beam
酉少微Lesser Subtlety
辛天乙Heavenly One
戌天魁Heaven's Chief
乾天廄Heaven's Stable
亥天皇Heavenly Sovereign
壬天輔Heaven's Aide

The four noble stars

Tianhuang over hai, Tianshi over gen, Taiyi over xun, Shaowei over you. They mark the four great star-walls of the sky. A dragon that arrives from one of these directions, or a fine peak that rises in one, is what Lai Buyi's Cuiguan Pian calls hurrying the office: it brings rank, wealth and names that are remembered. Three further directions are counted auspicious and six more are called the six elegances; the reading weighs them against the shape of the land, never alone.

What this changes in a reading

Two sites with the same hills and water are not the same site. The one whose dragon comes in under a noble star, and whose facing is set to answer it, is placed. This is the layer most feng shui taught in English has never heard of, and it is the layer the master works in last, after the land has been read in full.

This is the arrangement on the master's own luopan, the common one in use. Other plates differ in a few names; we read by this one.

How this differs from the feng shui you may have met

Three approaches are sold under one name. They are not the same thing.

Tianxing school, this schoolCompass schoolsWestern interior schools
Starts fromThe land: mountains, water, the shape of the site; then the stars above itThe building's bearing and the year it was builtThe floor plan laid over a fixed grid
NeedsWalking the ground, or reading it from satellite and photographsA floor plan and a compass readingA floor plan
Yin house, gravesIts original purposePossible, with landform supplied by someone elseNot practised
Typical adviceWhere to sit, which way to face, what the hills and water allowWhich rooms suit which uses this yearWhere to place objects and colours
Where it is taughtJiangxi, on the mountainHong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, onlineUnited States, Europe, online

Compass methods are part of our work too. They come after the land, not instead of it.

What changed

In the clients' own words. Names are changed; the sites are real. Video accounts on the YouTube channel.

“He read my grandfather's grave in Perak from satellite and eight photographs and told us the stone was ten degrees off. The old master who set it in 1962 had said the same thing to my father. Nobody had listened.”

W. Tan, Kuala Lumpur. Ancestral grave reading, 2025

“I had studied flying stars for six years. On day three in Xingguo I understood for the first time what a dragon actually is. I would have paid twice the fee.”

R. Mead, Melbourne. Field course, 2025

“Clear, practical, no theatre. The report told us which of the three houses to buy and why, and the contractor could follow the drawings.”

D. and L. Chen, Vancouver. Pre-purchase screen, 2026

Have your site read by someone who has walked three hundred of them.

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