This Character is Fu (Foo) and means luck or lucky. Around Chinese New Year lots of families and businesses put this character up on their doors. However, sometimes the character is turned upside down on the doors, like the second picture. At first when I saw this I was like ummmmmm...what? But then I was told it was a pun.
Fu by itself means lucky.
When you want to say something is upside down, or flipped you say it is "dao le"
"Dao le" however, can also mean arrived.
So when one says "Ni de fu dao le" (nee duh foo dao luh), "You're luck is upside down" it really means "You're luck has arrived!"
Oh those Chinese are punny, don't you think?
2 comments:
i love foreign language puns!
sorry for not commenting earlier - i've been traveling without my computer and have caught up with your entries only this morning. one thing really struck me though; the dynamic between waiters and patrons is really weird here too. part of it i think is the caste system; waiters are typically in a lower standing than their patrons, and a weird thing here is that lower caste people actually lose respect for higher caste people that treat them with a lot of respect. so you have to be mean and rude to the waiter to get him to respect you and actually serve you food or he'll try to cheat you. that's what it's like in delhi at least and according to what our leaders say; in south india they're naturally nicer to foreigners. it's something i'm still not used to at all though and i still feel really weird about it.
You adoring fans demand more posts.
Love.
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