What the book is and how it is built
Lai Buyi lived in the Southern Song. The Cui guan pian is the text that carries his name. It is written in verse and has four chapters. The dragon chapter judges the incoming range: where it enters, which mountain it comes from, and which star that mountain carries. The site chapter judges the xue, the spot where the range stops and the grave or house sits. The hills chapter judges the sha, the guarding hills and the peaks in view. The water chapter judges where water comes in and where it leaves.
In each chapter the test is the same: find the bearing, find the star, and ask whether that star supports office. The four noble stars and the three auspicious and six elegant mountains are shorthand that grew out of this method.
What this means on the ground
For someone choosing a plot, the book gives an order of work. Walk the range first. See where it comes from and whether it arrives alive. Then find the site: the spot where the slope settles, with support behind and open ground in front. Then look around at the hills, left, right and ahead, and judge their shape and bearing. Then follow the water, where it enters, how it gathers, where it leaves.
Only after that does the luopan come out, and the stars are read against what the eye has already found. This is the Tianxing method in one line: let the sky confirm the ground. A grave that passes the four tests is said to favour office. A house or a shop is judged by the same four steps, with the door standing in for the stone.
Common mistakes
The first mistake is to read the title as a promise. Cui guan names a type of site, one whose dragon, site, hills and water all line up in a way the book rates as favouring office. It does not say that anyone buried there will be promoted.
The second mistake is to study the book from the page alone. The verses are compact, and the names of the stars mean little until you have stood on a range and watched a peak land on Gen or Xun. This school teaches it on the mountain, with the book in hand, walking from the incoming range to the water mouth. The third mistake is to skip the first three chapters and go straight to the stars. The stars are the last check, not the first.
Questions people ask
What is the Cui guan pian in feng shui?
It is a classic by Lai Buyi, the Song dynasty master the Tianxing school traces itself to. In four parts it judges dragon, site, hills and water against the 24 stars of the luopan. The title means Hastening of Office, the book's name for a site that favours careers.
Who was Lai Buyi?
Lai Buyi was a feng shui master of the Southern Song, active in Jiangxi and the south. He is honoured as the founder of the Tianxing school and is best known for the Cui guan pian. Later manuals often cite him.
Can I learn the Cui guan method online?
You can read the text and learn the 24 stars online, and that is a fair start. The method itself is learned on the ground, sighting real ranges and peaks with a luopan. Our field course in Ganzhou walks the book chapter by chapter on real sites.
To learn the four chapters on real ground, join the field course in Ganzhou, or ask Master Zhang to read your plot by the same method.