What is bai sei gok? The Chinese four-corners custom for moving into a new home

First, what this page leaves out: lucky dates and hours, compass directions, and anything along the lines of “if you skip it, something bad happens”. That is not us dodging. We could not find reliable sources for any of it, and we would not use it to frighten you anyway.

What is bai sei gok?

A few words first, because none of them translate neatly.

• 入伙 (yap fo) is the everyday Cantonese word for moving into a new home. It is the same word people use for a housewarming dinner (入伙酒).
• 拜 (bai) means to pay respects with offerings and incense. 四角 (sei gok) means four corners.
• 衣紙 (yi zi) is joss paper: paper offerings that are burned. Shops in Hong Kong sell a set specifically for this, called 四角衣 (sei gok yi).

Words.hk, a community-edited Cantonese dictionary, defines bai sei gok like this:

It is not only a Hong Kong idea to mark moving in. In Taiwanese Hokkien the move itself is called 入厝 (ji̍p-tshù), which the Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary defines as moving into a newly completed home. Families there have their own customs, which we have not researched for this page.

Who is being honoured?

We could not find a neutral source that says clearly who or what is being honoured. One feng shui article describes it as greeting the spirits already living in the home (HK01, 8 July 2025; a feng shui piece, for reference only). Others link it to the earth gods or the household earth god, but we found no neutral source for that either.

Some background, if you have ever seen a small red shrine at a Hong Kong front door. The Chinese Wikipedia article on household earth gods (地主神, dei zyu san, literally “lord of the ground”, nothing to do with a landlord) says homes traditionally keep a tablet for them in the main room, and that Cantonese and Hong Kong families also keep a separate shrine for the earth god outside the door. Whether bai sei gok is addressed to the same gods, we could not find a neutral source that says.

The English Wikipedia article on Tudigong, the Chinese earth god, has one line worth knowing: when people move, “they will say goodbye to their local Tudigong and worship that of the new location”. Its references are thin. But it is close to how we would describe bai sei gok ourselves: saying hello to a new place. That is our reading, not a settled fact.

Where does the “how to” come from?

When we wrote this, the only neutral material we found on bai sei gok itself was dictionaries and encyclopedias. The dictionaries define what the custom is, but none describe how to do it. We could not find any official body, classical text or religious institution that explains the steps.

Nearly every step-by-step guide we found is written by a feng shui consultant, or is marketing content from a removal company, a homeware shop or a renovation platform. That does not make them useless. But each is one practitioner’s version, and many come bundled with lucky dates and taboos.

So when we describe common practice below, we are only reporting that some people do it this way. We are not saying which version is correct.

What do families actually do?

Broken down, there are about five questions, and families answer each one differently:

• How many spots: the four corners; many people add the centre (the dictionary entry says “usually the middle”).
• Offerings: they vary. One Hong Kong guide quoting feng shui consultant Mak Ling Ling (HK01, July 2025) lists peanuts, fruit, raw pork, cooked duck eggs, sweets and red dates, plus incense, candles and joss paper. We have not checked other versions one by one, so we do not list them.
• Order: the same guide starts from the corner nearest the front door and goes clockwise. That is one consultant’s method, not a shared rule.
• Joss paper: Hong Kong joss paper shops sell a four-corners set; our family’s shop is one of them (see “From the shop” below).
• Where to burn it: the same guide burns the paper in the centre of the flat. We want to be plain about this: burning paper inside a sealed flat is the one version we would ask you not to do. Smoke alarms, ventilation, your lease and your neighbours are all real risks.

Choosing the day and hour belongs to date-selection and feng shui. We do not cover it.

What if you cannot burn anything where you live?

In many apartments overseas, even a stick of incense is awkward, let alone burning paper. That is a limit of your building, not a failing on your part.

We have written separately about burning joss paper in an apartment or on a balcony, and about how to check the rules where you live.

If burning is out, here are our suggestions, not traditional rules:

• Set out the offerings, and light incense or a candle if you can, without burning paper (mind the smoke alarm).
• Ask your elders which part of the ritual matters most to them, and do that part.
• If you cannot buy the paper locally, a joss paper shop or temple in the nearest Chinatown may have it.

What should you ask your elders?

Not knowing is nothing to be embarrassed about. “I don’t know how, and I’d like to do it the way our family does” is a perfectly good opening. We do the same: when we are not sure, we ask our mum.

1. “When our family moved before, what did we do?”
2. “How many spots? Do we do the middle as well?”
3. “Which offerings? Do we burn paper?”
4. “If I can’t burn anything here, what would put your mind at ease?”
5. “Who taught you to do it this way?”

The last one is not a test. It is a small way of keeping a piece of family memory, since customs like this are mostly passed on by word of mouth.

What we read for this page

• Dictionaries (neutral): words.hk, 拜四角 and 入伙; Taiwan Ministry of Education, Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwanese Taigi, 入厝. Checked 26 September 2026.
• Background (Wikipedia; the relevant lines are weakly referenced): Chinese Wikipedia, 地主神; English Wikipedia, Tudigong. Checked 26 September 2026.
• Classical text: Book of Rites, chapter on the months and Book of Rites, chapter on sacrifices (Wikisource, Chinese).
• Feng shui / commercial (reference only): HK01, a four-corners guide quoting feng shui consultant Mak Ling Ling (written by Mandu, 明洞Mandu), 8 July 2025 (in Chinese). We use only what it says about who is being greeted, the offerings, the order and the burning location, not its dates or taboos.