I have encountered the following question many times in my practice. It goes like this, “The time that you have given me is not enough for me to complete my move.”

The first time I heard this, it took me a while to understand the question. Selecting an auspicious date for moving is include in my scope of service for a Feng Shui audit. I usually provide one or two auspicious dates and time for this purpose.

Unlike the western hour, a Chinese hour is 120 minutes long. Therefore there are 12 Chinese hours in a 24 hour day. These Chinese hours are given a name each. For example the slot between 11 pm and 1 am is called “Zi” or “Zi time”, the slot between 1 am and 3 am is called “Chou” while 3 am and 5 am is “Mao” and so on.

In the old days, practitioners will state the “time” by name, for example he may say move on this date at “Si” hour which is the time between 9 am and 11 am. Nowadays we specify time is Western hours.

This is where the confusion starts. In the above example, the home owner thought that they have to start the move at 9 am and complete them by 11 am.

This is incorrect. The auspicious time is actually the time that you should arrive at the new house and start moving people and items into the house. You can then continue to move other items later in the day, the next day, next week or even the next month.

Perhaps this is the reason why some practitioners give a specific time e.g. 9:30 am or 10:00 am to move?