What is the meaning of pasting the word "Fu" upside down during the Spring Festival? The Origin of Pasting the Chinese Character "Fu" Upside Down
Introduction: "When the sun shines brightly in every household, people always replace the old charms with new ones." The most festive and lively Spring Festival of the year has arrived again, and every household will replace the Spring Festival couplets and paste the word "Fu" upside down during the Spring Festival. So, why should the word "Fu" be pasted upside down? Are there any particular requirements for pasting the word "Fu"? Is there any anecdote to explain this? New year, new atmosphere, there are countless topics about the Spring Festival. If you want to know more about the Lunar New Year, please continue to pay attention to Mr. Shui Mo’s exclusive Spring Festival special articles for you!What's the significance of pasting the word "Fu" upside down?In my country's traditional feng shui folk customs, there is indeed a saying of pasting the word "Fu" upside down, which is a homonym of "dao" (upside down) and "dao" (arrive), meaning "good fortune has arrived". In folk tradition, the word "Fu" is pasted upside down mainly in two places.The places where the word "Fu" is pasted upside down are usually water tanks, trash cans, and cabinets at home. The first place: on water tanks and trash cans, because the contents of the water tanks and trash cans need to be poured out. In order to avoid throwing away the good fortune in the house, the word "Fu" is pasted upside down. This approach cleverly uses the homonym of the word "dao" (upward), "dao", to offset "fu qu" (good fortune arrives), expressing the yearning for a better life. The second place: on the cabinet inside the house. A cabinet is a place to store things. Pasting the word "Fu" upside down means that good fortune (and wealth) will always come to your home, room and cabinet. In the following cases, the word "Fu" should be pasted upside down: 1. If someone in your family dies or other disasters occur during the year, such as fire or car accidents, friends who want to change their luck can stick the word "Fu" upside down; 2. In the old society, people would deliberately paste the word "Fu" upside down to bring good luck. The specific situation was as follows: If there is a child in the family who can just learn to read, the family members will deliberately paste the word "Fu" upside down, and call the child over to ask: Is our word "Fu" pasted correctly? If a child says "福道（到） 了", he/she will get a candy; if the child unfortunately says it wrong, the adult will take out the prepared straw paper from his/her pocket, take out the straw paper and wipe the child's mouth. Meaning: The sentence just now was not spoken out loud, so it doesn’t count! Moreover, the character "福" was immediately corrected afterwards; From this we can see that it is extremely ignorant to stick the character "Fu" upside down in public. It doesn’t mean that all the characters for “Fu” should be pasted like this, especially on the door. The word "Fu" on the door is always pasted upright. The word "Fu" on the front door means "welcoming blessings" and "accepting blessings", and the front door is the entrance and exit of the family, a solemn and respectful place. The word "Fu" posted on the front door must be solemn, dignified and generous, so it should be posted upright. Feng Jicai said: "If we turn the word fu on the door upside down like nowadays, it will be top-heavy, disrespectful and ridiculous, and contrary to the spirit of Chinese 'door culture' and 'New Year culture'. If we think it's fun to stick it upside down casually, isn't it just too frivolous and rough to treat our own folk culture?" The Origin of Pasting the Chinese Character "Fu" Upside DownSome people have also researched that the custom of pasting the word "Fu" upside down originated from the Prince Gong Palace in the Qing Dynasty. The story goes like this:On the eve of the Spring Festival one year, the chief steward wrote many "Fu" characters to please his master and asked people to post them on the storehouse and the gate of the palace. However, one family member was illiterate and mistakenly pasted the "Fu" character on the gate upside down. For this, Prince Gong's wife was very annoyed. Fortunately, the butler was eloquent and knelt on the ground and said in a servile manner: "I often hear people say that Prince Gong is long-lived, blessed with great fortune. Now the great fortune has really arrived (upside down), which is a sign of good fortune." After hearing this, the wife thought to herself, no wonder passers-by said that Prince Gong's mansion had good fortune (upside down), auspicious words are said a thousand times, and gold and silver will increase by thousands of pieces. She was so happy that she rewarded the butler and the family member who pasted the upside-down blessing. Later, the custom of pasting the word "Fu" upside down spread from the mansions of high-ranking officials to the homes of ordinary people, and people would wish passers-by or children to say a few words: "Fu has arrived, Fu has arrived!" There is also a legend about pasting the character "Fu" upside down among the people. Emperor 朱元璋 (Zhu Yuanzhang), a founder of Ming dynasty, once used the character "福" as a hidden signal to prepare killing someone. In order to avoid this disaster, the kind-hearted Queen Ma ordered all households in the city to paste a "Fu" character on their doors before dawn. Naturally, no one dared to disobey Empress Ma's order, so the word "Fu" was posted on the doors of every household. One family was illiterate and pasted the label with the word "Fu" upside down. The next day, the emperor sent people to the streets to check and found that every household had posted the word "Fu" on the street, except for one household which had posted it upside down. The emperor was furious after hearing the report and immediately ordered the imperial guards to execute the entire family. When Empress Ma saw that things were not going well, she hurriedly said to Zhu Yuanzhang: "That family knew you were coming today, so they deliberately pasted the word "Fu" upside down. Doesn't this mean "good fortune has arrived"? "The emperor thought it made sense and ordered the release of the people. A disaster was finally averted. From then on, people began to paste the word "Fu" upside down, one to pray for good luck, and the other to commemorate Queen Ma. Summary: Through the above article, we know some things to pay attention to when pasting the word "Fu" upside down, and we also know the story behind it. I hope it can be a constructive reference for everyone. I wish you all good fortune and luck in the new year! After reading this article, there are more exciting content in the Spring Festival special topic, let’s take a look! |
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