"When designing a building, you have to account for things like terrain, materials, weather, handicapped accessibility and, of course, ghosts.

"You can design a building more awesome than the Guggenheim and nobody will want to go in it if there's evil spirits just running through it willy-nilly. With that in mind, here's how people in different parts of the world build guaranteed demon-free housing.

"Yuyuan Garden is believed to be built in the Ming Dynasty more than 400 years ago. Built in traditional Chinese style with numerous rock and tree garden areas, ponds, dragon-lined walls and numerous doorways and zigzagging bridges separating the various garden areas and pavilions. In the past over 400 years, Yuyuan was restored and reopened several times.

(Note: click on "English" on top right to see text in English).

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"A Colossal Undertaking

"The laying out of the gardens required enormous work. Vast amounts of earth had to be shifted to lay out the flower beds, the Orangerie, the fountains and the Canal, where previously only woods, grasslands and marshes were. The earth was transported in wheelbarrows, the trees were conveyed by cart from all the provinces of France and thousands of men, sometimes whole regiments, took part in this vast enterprise."

"Whether you're looking for balance and harmony in your home, office or diet, feng shui is the latest (by Western standards, anyway) miracle cure for all that ails you. But, in fact, the concept of "chi," the energy that feng shui strives to balance, can be traced to Taoism, a Chinese philosophy that dates back to the sixth century B.C. The Taoist belief asserts that human language is incapable of ex­plaining our existence in the world. Chi is a power beyond the physical world."

"Diamonds are a girl's best friend, but for some girls, white diamonds (search) just aren't good enough anymore.

The rich and famous have fallen in love with colored diamonds, which are rarer and exponentially more expensive than their white counterparts. And the trend is inspiring regular consumers who follow the latest style icons."

"Behind these groundbreaking walls is an idea -- we should be free to live in an environment that is non-toxic; one that helps clean rather than contaminate the air, the earth, and our bodies. That was the pivotal point of my conversation with design/builder Anthony Brenner on his house made from hemcrete based on industrial hemp-- the first in the US."

"The earliest humans looked at the star-filled night sky and knew that the shapes and patterns of the constantly shifting cosmic panopl­y must somehow be important. Their attempts to explain the seemingly arbitrary events of life (changing seasons, wars, economic hardship, weather) and link their lives to the stars above resulted in a combination of religion and science -- astrology.