Feng Shui Calendar Widget is a viral digital tear-off home screen app created by Beijing-born developer Jingyi Ma. It successfully mimics traditional Chinese almanacs with a minimalist interface offering users daily guidance around timing, planning, routines, and decision-making. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Ma to hear all about her background, her app, and what feng shui is all about.
Thank you for joining us. You have quite an interesting background. Please tell us about yourself.
I’m a creative technologist based in New York City. I began my career in finance, but I’ve always been drawn to art, design, and building things in general. So I taught myself software design and development and began creating mobile apps independently. I also share the behind-the-scenes on social media, from the original idea and design decisions to demote the final app. I’m especially interested in using technology to make cultural knowledge feel more accessible, engaging, and relevant to modern life.
For those unfamiliar with feng shui, can you elaborate on what exactly it is and why we should incorporate it into our lives?
Feng shui is a traditional Chinese practice centered on how we interact with our surroundings. At its core, it is about creating greater harmony between people, spaces, time, and the natural world. Many people think feng shui is just about arranging furniture or decorating a home, but it is part of a much broader Chinese worldview that considers how our spaces, timing, environment, and natural rhythms influence daily life. I think of it as a framework that encourages us to pause, pay attention, and create conditions that better support how we want to live. Even small actions, like physically changing the calendar to the next day, adjusting our routines with the seasons, decluttering our space, or reading ancient wisdom to clear the mind, can help us feel more grounded and intentional.
What was the motivation to start your own app?
The idea was inspired by my grandma. I grew up with my grandparents in Beijing, and my grandma kept a traditional tear-off Chinese almanac in her home. Every morning, the first thing she would do was tear off the page for the new day. It was a daily ritual. She would even reuse the old pages to write down recipes and shopping lists. The traditional Chinese almanac contains so much cultural knowledge and ancient wisdom, but younger generations rarely buy physical calendars anymore. For Chinese people growing up outside China, language and cultural context can make that knowledge even harder to access.
I wanted to explore how something old and physical could be passed down through a digital format without losing the feeling that made it special. That became the Feng Shui Calendar Widget: a modern interpretation of my grandma’s tear-off calendar, designed for the iPhone. I intentionally preserved details from the physical experience. For example, I designed the calendar UI to focus on one day at a time, and users have to manually tap the widget to “tear” into a new day. I believe the best digital products are often borrowed from the physical world. My goal was not simply to digitize the information, but to preserve that whimsical childhood feeling and make the tradition more accessible to a new generation.
How should we use the Feng Shui Calendar Widget to get the most out of it?
The simplest way is to add the widget directly to your iPhone’s home screen, so the calendar becomes part of your daily routine rather than another app you have to remember to open. Each morning, you can “tear” into the new day and see the lunar date, solar term, activities considered auspicious and things to avoid for that day. I also added a daily Chinese wisdom section to the calendar to help center the mind. Within the app, you can explore more guides to Chinese culture and ancient wisdom.
I designed it to be a daily companion, inspired by my grandma’s daily ritual but reimagined for the younger generation. You can use it to choose a date for an important event, learn something new about Chinese culture, or simply enjoy a quiet moment in the morning. The calendar can also be personalized with different themes, fonts, and decorative elements, so it feels at home on your phone.
Anything else we should know?
What has meant the most to me is hearing from young diasporic Chinese people who say the app reminds them of their parents’ or grandparents’ homes. Many of them loved the calendar immediately, even if they never fully understood how to read it. That emotional connection showed me that the app is more than simply picking an auspicious date, it can also be a way of reconnecting with a memory, a family tradition, or a part of your cultural identity. More broadly, I’m interested in how design and technology can help cultural traditions continue to live without losing their core. Traditions do not have to remain static in one format and eventually be forgotten. They can evolve with each generation while still preserving the feelings, stories, and meaning that made them important in the first place.
Download the Feng Shui Calendar Widget HERE or on your iPhone.
