The Upside-Down 'Fu'

At Chinese New Year, most families like to post Red Banners and Posters around the house to signal ‘good luck’, ‘fortune’, ‘good health’ and ‘happiness’.

One of the those common posters is a single word ‘Fu 福‘ means all those aforementioned signs. However it will be posted upside-down, like:

A natural question is ‘Why?’ The ‘upside-down’ (倒) has a Chinese synonym ‘到’ (Arrival), so it would mean ‘the luck has arrived’.

There was a story associated with this tradition:
A Ming Dynasty Emperor, Ju-Yuan-Zhang, used the word ‘Fu 福‘ as a signal to kill somebody. In order to get rid of this terrible practice, Emperor Ju’s wife, the good-hearted Queen Ma ordered everyone post the word ‘Fu 福‘ on his front door by the dawn. No one dared to disobey the order, but many people were illiterate and they posted the word upside-down. The next morning, the Emperor’s soldiers went out to check and found every household had the word ‘Fu 福‘ posted on its door and saw one house had the word upside-down. After having learned the report the Emperor was furious and ordered to kill every member of that family and all of its relatives. Queen Ma tried to stop this massacre, explained to the Emperor:
“That family knew that you were coming to visit. They deliberately post the word upside-down to signal the arrival of good luck.”
The Emperor turned his fury into a happy smile and rescinded the order. Hence a potential tragedy was averted.
From then on, people started to post the word upside-down deliberately to wish receiving good luck and happiness.

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It was also a custom that people tended to decorate the word with added pictures and symbols of various good signs and words.





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There are places this word was posted, like on the huge Water Container and Garbage Can because the content of these two should be emptied (Dao 倒) to get rid of the ‘old’ bringing the ‘new’, signaling a bright future.

Another place is the Chest where thing were stored. Posting upside-down ‘Fu 福‘ would bring the luck to this chest and this household.

As of posting it on the front door, normally the word ‘Fu 福‘ should be posted upright, meaning to receive the luck and fortune. The front door is showing the entrance of this household and it needs to be set up in right form with dignity, hence the word should NOT be posted in wrong direction. So this is the only exception – the word shouldn’t be posted upside-down on the front door.



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