Thursday, January 27, 2011

Odd Chinese New Year Characters Explained

So here we are. One week away from Chinese New Year (CNY) on the 3rd February 2011!

CNY food and decorations are now crazily being sold all over the country.

Two of the decorations are these:









First, why is the character, "福" shown upside down here?
The character actually means good fortune. And upside down in Mandarin sounds like "coming to you".
So, an upside down 福 means "Good fortune will come to you".

The second picture shows a chinese character which is not in the dictionary.
In fact, it's 4 chinese characters joined together to form one gigantic character.
This gigantic character consists of the 4 characters, 招财进宝 in traditional Chinese characters. It means "Wealth comes to you".

Happy CNY to all!

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