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Thursday, July 23, 2015

Yesterday, Channel 8 Filmed At The Lotus Galleries


Yesterday afternoon [14 July 2015], TCS (I mean Channel 8) came to the Lotus galleries. They used the VIP gallery to film a scene of their upcoming serial drama. And so I watched how a less than 10 minute TV-scene was made. Quite some hard work!

The scene has got to do with a certain "fengshui consultation". 

Some blessed clients asked jokingly after I post the pictures of them filming at the Lotus VIP gallery: did I collect rent from them?

Nope.

Well in retrospect, I should have. Haha.

But I did went through quite a bit of thinking before allowing them to use the Lotus galleries for their shooting: how would they use the beautiful exterior and magnificent interior of the galleries? Would they do the Lotus galleries injustice? And even more influentially, would they make use of the Lotus to downplay the art of fengshui?

I thought of how fengshui was depicted - when I still watched TV, when I was young, a random cheapskate uncle with makeshift plastic chairs and mahjong table or a mysterious soothsayer in a dark and smoky enclosure. 

When I got the call from MediaCorp's representative, I saw a chance.


I wanted the series to be filmed in the bright and glorious VIP gallery. I roughly knew the script, and I bet my chips that fengshui would be depicted otherwise.

I remembered when Master Yun started the founding Lotus gallery. He has the strongest detest for fengshui practitioners who destroy the reputation and status of fengshui, and Chinese culture at large. I would even say he has a hatred for mediocrity. I inherited this trait. The battle against the relegation of this reputable and imperial art into mere superstitious, placebos and quick money from cheap imitation, never ceased.

5 years ago, we expanded Lotus on Water into MBS. 2 reasons, we wanted the world to know that Singapore has respectable luxury brands, and fengshui - this ancient Chinese art - can be prestigious, precise and honorable. Sadly, the collaboration didn't work out. The perspectives didn't match.

But the Lotus galleries along Upper Thomson Road still receive overseas guests. Dedicated guests. A guest from overseas told his driver: bring me to the best fengshui gallery in Singapore. That was how I knew him. That was how he started. That was how the valuation of his company grew 10 times in 6 months.

And I am glad Channel 8 has chosen the Lotus galleries to show how fengshui should be.

-- Kan Ying Loong, Executive Director
15 July 2015

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