Feng shui, or "wind water", is a kind of geomancy which has been in practice in China for at least two thousand years.

Geomancers, feng shui masters, claim they can find the best "dens" for the burial of one's parents, or can make one prosperous or get a rapid promotion if one is a government official.

They can also make special arrangements to end a politician's bad luck streak, or turn bad luck to good to get re-elected, for instance.

Tsai Ing-wen, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairwoman, is no exception, according to some on her staff.

She wasn't lucky after she was elected to succeed Frank Hsieh as leader of the opposition party last year. In-fighting harassed her and her leadership almost collapsed - until after some little special arrangements were made at her party office, say staffers who don't want to be named.

An anteroom was used by the staff for a long time. They were ordered to work somewhere else, while the room was cleared of everything, but a desk was placed to "guard" the door to her private office.

So far as geomancy is concerned, the door affects the popularity of anyone sitting behind it. A sty-like anteroom had to be cleaned and the desk with a sculptured tree on it was placed to bring back luck by guarding the door.

Right after the arrangements were all in place, Tsai's streak of bad luck ended with a mass rally on May 17 and a following sit-in she organised.

The campaign against President Ma Ying-jeou was a great success, and Tsai reasserted her leadership, with all the cantankerous factions ceasing to quarrel.

"We believe," one of her staffers said, "feng shui worked the miracle."

Of course, Tsai did not acknowledge she had consulted any geomancer.

Her predecessors did. One of them consulted a noted geomancer when the then-ruling government party began its fall and decline.

An image of Maitreya, a Buddha of the Future, at the DPP central office, had a crack in 2005. The geomancer consulted recommended the removal of the wood image. The advice wasn't accepted. The party has since lost election after election.

But Yu Shyi-kun accepted a recommendation by a geomancer to replace the semi-transparent door to his office with one of heavy solid wood.

He wanted to have his door guarded. But it didn't work wonders.

A veteran Kuomintang (KMT) lawmaker, Hsu Chung-hsiung, consulted a feng shui master about his Legislative Yuan office he was to remodel.

The geomancer came and measured the room. He said there was a gap of a couple of inches on the partitioning between good and bad luck.

Hsu had to redo the remodeling all over. He got re-elected.

His KMT colleague Hsieh Kuo-liang or Chang Hua-kuan, a DPP lawmaker, had to give up an office after last year's legislative elections. One of them would have an office twice as large then

They requested a feng shui expert to decide who should move out.

But when the geomancer arrived, the two lawmakers experienced a cool wind blowing in. They considered it an omen. Both held on to their smaller respective offices.

Some offices of legislators were not in propitious "dens".

Two lawmakers lost last year's elections, and their offices became empty. A new legislator, at the advice of a feng shui master, had the two empty offices turned into one.

Chang Chia-chun now occupies the larger office.