How to make Chinese 'Fu' poster?

Last post introduces many red items that are characteristics of Spring Festival, a tradition of Chinese new year. There is one single Chinese character that is expected to be seen on the doors of Chinese families. That one is '福' (fú), meaning 'Luck', 'good fortune', and so on.

Some people prefer putting the 'Fu' poster upside down, believing this would lead 'Fu' to come. The reason is that when 'Fu' is upside down means '福倒'(fú dào), which sounds like '福到' (fú dào), which just means 'Fu' comes! If you remember that '福'(fú) is just 'Luck', you will see why it means so much.

Well, do you want to make one all by yourself? Just prepare:

(1) two kinds of paper (red and yellow);

We use the wrap paper which you can easily find in any stationary store. BTW, in Qing dynasty, only the emperor can use the color of yellow, so yellow represents the imperial power.

(2)tools: scissors/knife,pen,glue;

We will show you how to make it come ture step by step.

1. First, please download this template of 'Fu' and then print it out using an A4 paper;

2. Cut the '福' out of that paper like this:

3. Now put the cut '福' on the back of the yellow paper because you need to either hold them firmly or just fixate them so that you can draw the outline of the character '福' as in the following graph. Yes, it's just the mirror image of the normal '福'.

If you pay more attention in this figure, you will find our red X notation, meaning that you need to cut out this part.

4. Now just cut along the outline you just drawed, then you can creat this '福' out of your yellow paper.
5. Then cut out a square from the red paper, and paste the yellow 'Fu' on it, and you are done! You can adjust the length of the red square. For us, we choose 26cm.
This is our product:
How about yours?

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Let's get Red!--Spring Festival!

This season is Houston Rockets' Get Red season:While for Chinese people, each year, around late January and early February (according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar), it is the RED SEASON! And RED is just the theme during this 'Spring Festival'--the start of Chinese New Year. Red stands for foutune, luck, love, happiness... This is the big time for Chinese families to get together, just like Christmas in this sense.

Some stars already join in this RED trend:

Kobe sends out his greetings:

with Chinese Tang-zhuang (táng zhuāng) in ‘科比中国之家’(Lit. Kobe's Home in China)

Paris Hilton tried Chipao (qí páo) in Shanghai in 2008:

Below are some RED things that are typical in Spring Festival:

duì lián:

Chinese Knot (zhōng guō jié):

Latern (dēng long):

Zigong Latern Festival (dēng huì):

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Pinyin-Link them together!

Now we already learned 'Initials', 'Finals' and 'Tones', it is time for us to combine these 3 things and speak Chinese out!
Question: Can you try to pronounce 'nǐ hǎo' and 'zài jiàn'?

nǐ hǎo =Hello!=How are you doing?
zài jiàn=Bye!=See you!

I would like to highly recommend you go to this site to practise all these combinations. Just by clicking THREE parts you can listen to the standard pronunciation:

For example, if you want to hear what nǐ sounds like, then:
1. Click 'n' under initials;
2. Click 'i' under finals;
3. Click '3rd' in tones.

CC's note:
1. One 'problem' for newcomes of Pinyin is that they feel a little frustrated when it comes to this part to combine initials and finals since some initials do NOT go along with some finals. Well, please relax!!! This is not a rule for you to learn by rote, nor to confuse you.

2. Another good feature of the above page is that you can find out what combinations are valid or not, which are differentiated by bold and shaded fonts. By speaking instead of merely memorizing lots of times, I think it would be natural for you to see which initial and final are a good match.

3. The following syllables may sound a bit beyond your expectation:

zhi chi shi ri zi ci si

For example, 'shi' does NOT sound like 'she' (in English), when you try to combine 'sh' and 'i'.

You are welcome to experiment and then correct your own pronunciation as much as possible. Anyway, please practise!

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Pinyin-tone

Writing does not help too much here, so I will keep it simple:

1. 4 tones in Standard Mandarin:



2. It's something like this:

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Pinyin-Finals

Today, let's just finish all finals and end the seemingly boring foundation lecture before the Chinese new year (In the 'Chinese Calander' on the right, it begins on 26th, Jan.)!

There are more finals than initials and they seem to be more messy, but I decide to list all of them in this single post so that you can keep checking them back. I think after the excercise from initials you should be a bit familiar with the Pinyin Phonetic system and be aware of its difference from English. Smilarly, what you need to do again is just:

Listen->Mimic->Practice->Correct

Hopefully before Chinese new year we can learn some simple greetings based on this Pinyin system. So now let's check them out one by one:

a o e i u ü
--These 6 are the basics. The following can be regarded as combinations of them.

ai ei ao ou

--Take 'ai' for example, it's just combining the pronunciation of 'a' and 'i', try that out, do you make it?

ia ie ua uo ue(üe)

iao iou uai uei

--It appears to be complicated, but it's nothing but combination! For instance, iao=i+ao, right?:)

an ian uan üan

en in un ün

ang iang uang ong

eng ing ueng iong

In order not to scare you guys away, I will simply link you to Wiki for the tips of pronouncing finals.
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Pinyin-Initial-zh ch sh r y w

zh ch sh r
Now we are about to finish all the initials, and this group is also pretty special since some of them seldom (actually to my knowledge, NEVER) appear in English as par of normal words, say, zh. And for ch, sh and r, the way to pronounce is totally different. So you are encouraged to get some feeling of them here.
To pronounce these 4 sounds correctly, you need to curl you tongue. And the with the following tips you can get there.
zh: Like the 'dr' in 'drink'.
ch: Similar to the 'ch' in 'Chinese'. Notice, not exactly the same! Curl your tongue a little bit!
sh: Similar to the 'sh' in 'shoot'. Again, culr your tongue:)
r: Similar to the 'r' in 'rain'.

y w
No surprise, they just sound like the letters y and w as in English:
y: Like the 'y' in 'yes'.
w: Like the 'w' in ''we.

CC's Note:
1. These 4 sounds are retroflexed, so make sure you feel your tongue curled when you read them.
2. For r, please be noted that in English when you pronounce something like rain, your tongue is hung in your mouth without touching anywhere inside. But to pronounce the Pinyin r, you just make the front surface of your tongue close to the roof of your mouth, as well as the curling advice.


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