My father is awesome at calligraphy. He wrote 福 fú for Chinese New Year.

福 is such a high utility word. It means blessings, good fortune, prosperity, basically all the auspicious things you want to associated with living your life. No wonder it encapsulates the spirit of Chinese New Year.

Its origin is equally fascinating. The radical 礻is derived from a pictogram 示 , which depicts an altar.

The 畐 comes from the pictogram of a jar held by two hands used in offerings to divine powers.

This part is coincidentally made up of three characters: 一， 口 and 田, which mean one, mouth and field respectively. If we pay homage to our agricultural past, we draw links between 田 (paddy field) and 一口 (one bite) and extrapolate the meaning to be “having the food to sustain yourself”. I guess having 福 fulfills one’s physiological need as stated in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

So, 福 boasts at least two origins:

Wait, you wanted to ask me a question? Why did I paste the character 福 upside down on my front door?

In Chinese, when we hang it upside down (福倒来), we make use of homophones to suggest that prosperity has arrived (福到来). So, technology advancement may have changed our lives much, but this long-cherished Chinese custom will be passed down from generation to generation. (I’m very confident about this because Chinese people are quite money-minded money-conscious as a rule.)

Chinese New Year falls next January, so now you know more about our traditions!