Upside-down 'Fu' Character

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-01-19 16:27

Not all luck-bringing papers are couplets. Some are four-character-phrases that express traditional sentiments for a rich and bountiful spring. Still others are single characters, for example, the Chinese character "fu", meaning luck, blessings, happiness and good fortune.

The character "fu" is everywhere during the festival. On the doors of shops and families and even in rooms, people like to paste high the "fu" character calligraphed on red paper.

Fu is written on the paper squares, which can be pasted normally or upside down, for in Chinese the "reversed fu" is homophonic with "fu dao le" pronounced as "fu comes". The upside down fu becomes a pun that implies "good fortune has arrived". Thus, the paper squares represent the "arrival" of spring and the "coming" of prosperous year.