TEACHING ABOUT CHINESE HOUSES

Reproducible Images
(print out, cut, and place where appropriate)


(Cut out this image & place near the heating system--standing in for "the stove"--in the classroom)



 

Fu 福“Good Fortune’ or ‘Happiness’—and sometimes translated as “blessing” or “luck”—represents a constellation of felicitous elements.  Fu signifies etymologically the bestowal and receipt of divine favors. It is depicted about and around Chinese dwellings in myriad forms, not only by the ideograph itself but also by pictographic objects that are homonyms of fu, such as bats, tigers, and butterflies. Sometimes a fu character is deliberately hung upside down at the New Year, in order to heighten its efficacy. Encountering the upside down character, visitors and passersby are expected to utter, “fu is inverted” [fu daole] 福倒了, a punning homophone for “fu has arrived” 福到了. Source: Collection of Ronald G. Knapp.

(Cut out this image & place directly on the door, with the fu image right side up or inverted)


Periodic offerings were made to ancestors, who “resided” in the tablets on the altar table. This woodblock print details an elaborate offering, including meats, fruit, vegetables, and rice, echoing less sumptuous offerings still seen in urban and rural China. Here, all married couples in the family, with each wife standing behind her husband, perform the rituals. Local customs and household manuals helped guide the fom of ancestral worship. Source: Nakagawa, Tadahide中川忠英, comp. Shinzoku kibun xx俗紀聞 [Recorded accounts of Qing customs]. Annotated translation into modern Japanese. Tokyo: Heibonsha平凡社.


LEFT: Made of brass set within a lacquered frame, this geomancer’s compass includes seventeen concentric circles that need to be analyzed and cross-referenced. Xinzhu, Taiwan 1993 Source: Collection of Ronald G. Knapp

RIGHT: This traditional woodblock print shows a “wind and water” interpreter or fengshui xiansheng setting out to select an appropriate building site with assistants who are using measuring rods and manuals. The geomancer is consulting a “compass” or luopan set upon a folding table, and is similar to the one shown above. He uses it to discern directional orientation as well as a host of other relationships influencing site selection. Source:


A pair of vertical calligraphic couplets is hung alongside the door of Chinese homes at the time of the New Year. Some express literary allusions not easily understood by common people but more of them are simple to understand, like these that express (left) “Complete Good Fortune, Riches, and Longevity” and (right) “Peace Throughout the Year,” literally “Peace During in the Four Seasons’. Hong Kong 1996. Source: Collection of Ronald G. Knapp

(Cut this image into two vertical strips and place on both sides of the entry door to your classrom)
Return to TEACHING ABOUT CHINESE HOUSES Syllabus