Social life of the Chinese : with some account of their religious, governmental, educational and business customs and opinions, with special but not exclusive reference to Fuhchau . over a door, inside or outside thehouse, or on a cross-beam or post. Not unfrequently it is seenwritten very prettily in a large form, from two to six or eightfeet across, in red ink, on the wall opposite the front or maindoor of a house. This custom is explained by saying that hap-piness will in this manner be always near by. On opening thedoor every one will see it! Sometimes the pictures of fourbats are made at
Social life of the Chinese : with some account of their religious, governmental, educational and business customs and opinions, with special but not exclusive reference to Fuhchau . over a door, inside or outside thehouse, or on a cross-beam or post. Not unfrequently it is seenwritten very prettily in a large form, from two to six or eightfeet across, in red ink, on the wall opposite the front or maindoor of a house. This custom is explained by saying that hap-piness will in this manner be always near by. On opening thedoor every one will see it! Sometimes the pictures of fourbats are made at the four corners of the character for happi-ness thus written on the wall. The whole is then called theJive happinesses the characters for bat and happinesshaving in this dialect the same sound. A very happy and fe-licitous coincidence! Every body desires as much happinessas he can obtain, and this is one of the Chinese ways to indi-cate this universal desire of mankind. The four characters—happiness, official emolument, longevity, and joy—are oftenwritten together in a certain way. One of them is made of alarge size, and the other three inside of it, or on it, and of a. IIAITINESS. 324 CHARMS AND OMENS. smaller size. The whole combination is unintelligible exceptto the initiated, and is regarded as a kind of amulet or charmby some. The Jive happinesses1 are explained as referring towealth, office, tranquillity, virtue, and death in old age in Chinese here are singularly fond of wearing ornamentsmade of gems or precious stones, either genuine or material is first ground or worked down to the desiredsize or shape, and then some happy characters or felicitoussentences are engraved on it, such as Happiness like theEastern Ocean meaning abundance, or Longevity like the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookidsociallifeof, bookyear1865
