Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Happy Chinese New Year 2008

2008 is a year of rat or mouse (if you like to call it), but definitely not a year of hamster, right? As far as I know, there are twelves Chinese zodiac signs represented by different animals, rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and boar. And until now, I think there is no new animal to take over rat. Correct me if I'm wrong. But this year, as the year of rat, many actually mistakenly take hamster as rat in the decorations.

Tell me if the one being circled
is not a hamster


Besides, something has puzzled me for years. Why most of the CNY decorations in word are upside down? What does that mean in particularly?


Anyway, Happy Chinese New Year 2008!!! Be the new year full of joy, health and wealth!!!

9 comments:

~K£cќ~ said...

LOL the same question I asked zlz last year XDXD

So I'll tell you wat he said here: The word "fu" is put upside down on purpose.

He said last time somehow it was upside down and people will say "fu dau le" (means "fu" has arrived). So from that onwards it was put upside down.

zlz, please correct the story, I forgot most of it LOL

nostalgia.jesskang said...

Ic... I think I can guess what it means. The character "fu" being turned upside down (福倒了)also has another almost alike pronunciation as (副到了) which means luck arrives.

Lau Ky said...

There was this time, when a dad in one of the families hung this word 福 on the wall, but somehow it so happened to go upside down (I suppose one of the nails was loose or what), then the son of that father said "福倒了!"

It sounded like "福到了!" So people started to hang them upside down.

And they live happily ever after

I wish you'd pay for the story.

p/s: There are two methods of pronouncing 倒, namely the third and fourth tones. In this case, you use the fourth tone, which is the same as 到.

I hope this helps.

nostalgia.jesskang said...

Thanks, Shack...

~K£cќ~ said...

@.@ pay for the story? @.@

James2spooky said...

From the story I heard, it's not because the nail is loose. It's because the father doesn't know how to read a word (目不识丁) so his son reminded him that the word is up-side=down (福倒了)

Should I receive some payments as an editor? wakakaka

Shane said...

But if we read it in the third tone... Meaning Fu has collapsed... Haha...

bambinakong said...

Happy Lunar New Year my dearest ex-students...
the explaination by Kelvin is correct
James is right too, the dad can't read

~K£cќ~ said...

Happy Chinese New Year to you too ^^