The Chinese character ''fu'' (), meaning 'fortune' or 'good luck' is represented both as a Chinese ideograph and, at times, pictorially, in one of its homophonous forms. It is often found on a figurine of the male god of the same name, one of the trio of "star gods" , , and . Mounted ''fu'' are a widespread Chinese tradition associated with

Chinese New Year Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival (see also #Names, § Names), is a festival that celebrates the beginning of a New Year, new year on the traditional lunisolar calendar, lunisolar Chinese calendar. It is one of the most important holi ...

and can be seen on the entrances of many Chinese homes worldwide. The characters are generally printed on a square piece of paper or stitched in fabric. The practice is universal among Chinese people regardless of

socioeconomic status Socioeconomic status (SES) is a measurement used by economics, economists and sociology, sociologsts. The measurement combines a person's work experience and their or their family's access to economic resources and social position in relation t ...

, and dates to at least the

Song dynasty The Song dynasty ( ) was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Fiv ...

(960 – 1279 CE). When displayed as a Chinese ideograph, ''fu'' is often displayed upside-down on diagonal red squares. The reasoning is based on a wordplay: in nearly all

varieties of Chinese There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...

, the words for and are homophonous. Therefore, the phrase 'upside-down ''fu'' sounds nearly identical to the phrase 'good luck arrives'. Pasting the character upside-down on a door or doorpost thus translates into a wish for prosperity to descend upon a dwelling. Another story states that posting the character upside-down originates with the family of a 19th-century prince of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

. The story states that on one Chinese New Year's Eve, or , the prince's servants played a practical joke by pasting ''fu'' characters throughout his royal dwelling. One illiterate servant inadvertently placed the characters upside-down. The prince was said to have been furious upon seeing the characters, but a quick-thinking servant humbly calmed the prince by saying that the occurrence must have been a sign of prosperity "arriving" upon his household by using the above wordplay. Bats () are among the most ubiquitous of all Chinese symbols, with the same symbolic meaning as the

phono-semantic compound Chinese characters are generally logographs, but can be further categorized based on the manner of their creation or derivation. Some characters may be analysed structurally as compounds created from smaller components, while some are not decomp ...

of ''fu''. A less common match is , not only because, according to Welch, "depictions of grain have been used throughout Chinese history to represent fecundity", but also in concert with other grains with related homophonous wordplay—for example, is a syllable that can refer either to or .Welch, ''Chinese Art'', p. 52. Usage of ''fu'' in various forms, such as in calligraphy, seals, paper crafts, and posters, represents the desire that one's good luck will be expansive and multifaceted. Chinese textiles and ceramics often found transcribe this felicitous message by portraying random numbers of bats in flight, sometimes more than a hundred. Since 2017, the version 10 of the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Standard features a rounded version of the character in the "

Enclosed Ideographic Supplement Enclosed Ideographic Supplement is a Unicode block containing forms of characters and words from Chinese, Japanese and Korean enclosed within or stylised as squares, brackets, or circles. It contains three such characters containing one or more ...

" block, at code point .

Gallery

File:Chinese - Pair of "Famille Verte" Wine Pots in the Form of the Characters - Walters 492347, 492393 - Group.jpg, Pair of "Famille Verte" wine pots in the form of on the left and the character on the right File:HK Mid-levels 匯豪閣 Winsome Park lobby hall 農曆新年 Chinese New Year 裝飾 decoration 吉祥 Lucky words Jan-2012.jpg, Chinese New Year decorations in Hong Kong, with ''fu'' on the

Chinese knotting Chinese knotting, also known as (), is a Chinese folk art with ties to Buddhism and Taoism. A Chinese knot is made from a single length of cord that is woven into different shapes, with each shape having a symbolic meaning. The most common color ...

on the right File:Mu Mansion small inner courtyard mosaic.JPG, A pebble mosaic in a small inner courtyard of the Mu Mansion, Old Town of Lijiang, Yunnan, with ''fu'' in the center File:Nouvel an chinois Paris 20090201 034.jpg, Chinese New Year celebration in the 13th arrondissement of Paris in 2009, with ''fu'' in the front of the float File:Singapore River Hong Bao 2006 27, Feb 06.JPG, Fu lantern at the Singapore River Hongbao Carnival during the Chinese New Year in 2006 File:Chinese New Year decorations 2005.jpg, Chinese New Year decorations at Western Union's headquarters in Englewood, Colorado, with the center character, ''fu'', displayed upside-down

References

{{Chinese New Year, state=collapsed Chinese culture Chinese words and phrases Chinese traditions Korean traditions Vietnamese traditions

Gallery

See also

References