Good Life Midterm Flashcards
Rebuses
From Vivien Sung’s Five-Fold Happiness. Rebuses are pictures used to represent words or parts of words. Objects and symbols from Chinese culture, such as fu, derive their icons from rebuses. These symbols are usually represented as pictorial puns like, fu is the word for luck and bat, so a bat rebus symbolizes luck.
Pictorial Puns
From Vivien Sung’s Five-Fold Happiness. Pictorial puns are used to express ideas in the Chinese culture. These pictorial puns are known as ji xiang tu an. They developed during the Song dynasty and are represented by four Chinese characters.
Luck (fu)
From Vivien Sung’s Five-Fold Happiness. Luck is one of the five most sought-after values in Chinese culture. Luck is usually represented as a bat since they are homophones in the Chinese language. The character fu is used for many decorative purposes, like hanging over entranceways to continually bring in good fortune.
Five Bats (wu fu)
The Five Good Fortunes- From Vivien Sung’s Five-Fold Happiness. The five bats together represent the five good fortunes, longevity, wealth, health, love of virtue, and natural death. The five bats are sometimes arranged in a circle around the Chinese character for longevity to make a rebus. An image of the five bats flying over a round box symbolizes harmony.
Longevity (Shou)
From Vivien Sung’s Five-Fold Happiness. Longevity is the most highly esteemed value of the five-fold happinesses. The desire for long life is embodied in traditions like eating longevity noodles and peaches on an elder’s birthday. Wishes for longevity are often inscribed on scrolls displayed in homes.
Prosperity (lu)
From Vivien Sung’s Five-Fold Happiness. Prosperity in Chinese culture embodies status, honor, and advancement to high office. Lu directly translates to official salary. This placed great importance on education and passing exams to become a public official, guaranteeing an affluent and fortunate life. A symbol for lu is a deer.
Double Happiness
From Vivien Sung’s Five-Fold Happiness. Double Happiness is synonymous with marriage and is related to the wish for fertility. It commonly appears on bowls and glasses. The mandarin duck is a symbol of marriage and fertility.
Legend of the Four Happiness Boys
From Vivien Sung’s Five-Fold Happiness. Story about a child prodigy, Jie Jin, who created a symbol showing off all the great happinesses he believed existed. These happinesses were weddings, passing imperial exams, running into a friend in a far away place, and rain after a drought. This is shown in an illusion of two boys connected to make four different boys.
