- Bring feng shui to your home all you want, but don’t start messing with public property.
You’ve surely heard of feng shui. This ancient Chinese tradition teaches that you can change the conditions of your life by arranging buildings, furniture, and objects to channel natural energy flows.
Whether it works or is just superstition, you can decide for yourself. But if you give feng shui a try, you should restrict yourself to arranging furniture inside your own home.
Otherwise, you might cause a lot of trouble, like this Chinese woman.
Mrs. Luo had suffered a recent streak of ill health and general bad luck. She decided to consult a local feng shui master, who concluded that a traffic mirror at a nearby intersection was flooding the Luo household with demonic energy.
So, Mrs. Luo went and turned the traffic mirror in another direction. Of course, that prevented cars traveling through the neighborhood from seeing around the sharp corner, leading to several accidents.
Despite police intervention and the local authorities installing another mirror, Mrs. Luo kept tampering with them. The situation didn’t resolve itself until the property manager cemented the mirrors in place.
The cops also told Mrs. Luo that she’d face legal fallout if she touched them again. We’ll have to see whether she’ll comply or go after the mirrors with a jackhammer.
Shanghai Street Corner
The events took place in a neighborhood in Shanghai. For a long time in the past, the road through the neighborhood had been infamous for a narrow, completely blind turn that had resulted in many collisions.
In 2012, the local government and the neighborhood’s property management company resolved the issue by installing a traffic mirror.
That fixed the problem, and traffic through the neighborhood had flowed more or less safely since then. In early January 2026, however, somebody started tampering with the mirror.
Time and again, someone was turning the mirror to face away from the corner. That, of course, rendered the mirror useless, and people started crashing their cars again.
‘We Are No Demons’
The culprit, as it would soon be revealed, was one Mrs. Luo. According to her husband, Mr. Luo, she had recently suffered a spate of health issues and general misfortune.
So, she resolved to get her life back on track by hiring a feng shui master. He concluded that the root cause of all Mrs. Luo’s bad luck was the traffic mirror that pointed at their residence.
The feng shui expert told the couple that the round mirror resembled a “demon-revealing” mirror, an object in Chinese mythology used to reveal disguised devilish characters. Of course, the Luos weren’t demons, but having their house bombarded with evil energy wasn’t good, the master said.
“We are no demons. We are not happy having a demon-revealing mirror pointing at us,” Mr. Luo told South China Morning Post.
This Is Illegal, You Know
To stop her bad luck streak, Mrs. Luo started going out and adjusting the mirror to point away from their house. Doing so, she made the already difficult corner more difficult to navigate, much to the chagrin of her neighbors.
When they complained, the Luos responded that nobody used the traffic mirror anyway, so moving it shouldn’t matter. The immediate spike in traffic accidents, however, told another story.
After the neighbors complained to the property management company, they tried to untangle the situation. The managers installed another mirror, which allowed cars coming from the opposite direction to see through the turn.
Mrs. Luo initially agreed to the plan — but not for long. After another case of misfortune, she started messing with both mirrors.
At that point, property management decided they needed the police. Cops dropped by the Luo household to “educate” the couple.
In plainer terms, they told Mrs. Luo that adjusting the mirrors was a criminal offense, and she faced potential jail time if she kept doing it. They also pointed out that she could be held responsible for any traffic accidents resulting from the adjusted mirrors.
We didn’t find any further mentions of Mrs. Luo adjusting the mirrors. So, we can only assume she learned her lesson.
That, or the solid concrete shell the property management company poured over the mirrors did the trick.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…
Belief in feng shui is very common in China. After all, it is a tradition with thousands of years of history.
Although actually arranging your home according to feng shui is complicated, its basic principles are simple. According to feng shui teachings, there’s a natural flow to the energies coursing through the world. As such, to ensure a harmonious existence, we should construct and furnish buildings so that they align with these energy currents.
Mirrors, in particular, are believed to channel energy in immense amounts. Consequently, there are a lot of beliefs about how mirrors should be arranged in feng shui.
For instance, mirrors should never face the front door, windows, or the bed inside the home. Otherwise, they may reflect away good fortune and result in tragedy.
The same rules apply for mirrors outside the home, like the one at the street corner by the Luo house. They may reflect bad luck into the house, so they should be avoided.
And if you have a broken or cracked mirror? Well, you should certainly get rid of it post-haste or prepare for misfortune.
Sounds a lot like the Western belief of a broken mirror bringing seven years of bad luck. Some beliefs like that are just universal.
If you’d like to learn more about things that bring bad luck, why not check out our article about the ancient origins of 8 common superstitions?