Chinese Upside-down Blessing

Chinese New Year is the biggest and most important festival in China. Many people especially those who are learning Chinese online like it very much, not only because it’s the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, but because of its various traditional customs. 

Of its many special traditions, pasting red paper signs with the word “blessing” on walls and doors can be very interesting.  The Chinese character for “blessing” is “福”, which Chinese people like very much. The character is a prayer for a happy life and a better future. The interesting thing or the seemingly weird thing about the tradition is that Chinese people pasted the papers sighs upside down. This has confused many foreigners who don’t know much about this traditional Chinese custom. Did the Chinese people did this by mistake? If not, why are these paper signs pasted upside-down?

Emperor of the Ming dynasty commanded his soldiers to kill selected families. The doors of the selected families would be marked by a blessing sign. The kind-hearted Empress Ma heard this and wanted to prevent it. She secretly commanded the whole city to paste the blessing sign on their doors, so the soldiers would have no idea which families they were supposed to kill. But one family pasted a “blessing” sign upside-down as they had been in a hurry.

Since the emperor couldn’t decide which one to select, she simply picked the family who pasted the blessing upside down. When the emperor was about to kill the family, Ma quickly intervened and said the upside down blessing has a special meaning.

The Chinese character 倒 which means “upside down” or “reverse” has exactly the same pronunciation as the character 到 which means “to arrive.” She argued that this family knew the soldiers would be arriving that day and by pasting the sign upside-down, they meant that the arrival of the soldiers would be a blessing. She asked how the emperor could possibly want to kill this patriotic and kind family. The emperor heard this explanation and quit his idea of killing the family. Time passed by, and “pasting the “福” upside down” was carried on from generation to generation as traditional custom on Chinese New Year.

HSK grammar