By Claudia Carlin and Fang Cui

There are 42 Chinese characters around the circle on the Ba Gua (compass), which is used in evaluating Feng Shui.

Through the lens of Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of life-space design, the Empire State Building is "Dragon Mountain," once again the tallest testimonial to this city's vitality.

To deserve the regal name of Dragon Mountain, a building must be the highest among its peers but also the most aesthetically satisfying.

"It is a very special place," says Zaihong Shen, an artist, and author of several books on Feng Shui. "In China, we consider Dragon Mountain sacred."

On a recent Sunday afternoon, NYC24.COM accompanied Shen to the Empire State Building for an informal Feng Shui evaluation.

A slender figure with black hair pulled back in a short ponytail, Shen gestured toward the Fifth Avenue entrance, the only one open to the public since Sept. 11. "These doors are like a body's mouth and nose," Shen says. "Here the energy flow is very good because there is room for air and people to move freely."

Zaihong Shen applies Feng Shui to the way we live.

"The purpose behind Feng Shui (meaning "wind and water") is to balance the invisible energies, or chi, in the places where we live and work," says Shen, an affable woman who has written several books on the subject. Trained in China as an architect, Shen consults with building designers, decorators, businesspeople and homeowners across the United States.

Much like the practice of medicine, Feng Shui partakes of both science and art, according to Shen. It was developed over thousands of years and "is woven into the basic fabric of almost all residential and commercial architecture in Asia," she writes in the brochure introducing her downtown Feng Shui Gallery. It is based on three elements: Time (or fate), location (building and environment) and people as well as the dual notions of yin and yang (feminine and masculine elements).

A more formal space design analysis than the one Shen did on the Empire State Building is much more detailed. She conducts in-depth interviews with owners and employees, asking about their activities, lifestyles, even their birth dates. The data she gathers is fed into mathematical models to calculate the most favorable placement of furniture and maximum access to natural light. In Feng Shui, the interplay of light, decor and human activity is a high priority.

While Feng Shui has become trendy in the United States among interior decorators and developers looking for a new marketing angle, opinions are still divided on its efficacy. John Tauranac, author of a "biography" of the Empire State Building, dismisses the practice as "mystical."

Nevertheless, for Shen, a nine-year resident of downtown New York, Feng Shui has many practical applications that can help improve the environment surrounding our buildings and the spaces within them.

As for the Empire State Building — "In my view, it's got both too much yin," says Shen pointing west to the columns shielding the metal detectors, "and rather too much yang," as her eyes travel along the marble expanse of the monumental lobby walls. "But this combination creates drama and that's what draws all of us to this place."