Less Pain Chinese: culture

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2/01/2009

Chinese New Year celebrations around the world

A collection of pictures about how people celebrate this festival:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/jan/26/1?picture=342327786
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1/24/2009

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?

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: