What do I like about China? (other than low taxes, cheap beer, and the availability of fried chicken.)
The stories.
In a country with 5000 years of recorded history there’s a tale or two to be told. While the Europeans were living in caves, a movie character once memorably said, the Chinese were building cities and sailing the oceans.
I mentioned double happiness in a previous post and promised the whole story. Let us look back to the days of the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 CE). The Tang Dynasty is considered a renaissance of sorts, the golden age of Chinese painting, poetry and architecture. So, without further adieu:
Once upon a time…
…there was a young man, a student, on his way to the capital to complete his final examinations. The best and brightest, the students with the most outstanding exam results, would become ministers in the emperor’s court. The young man fell ill while making his journey and was taken in by a family in a mountain village. Lucky for the lad, the head of the household was a doctor. The physician and his pretty daughter treated the ill scholar and he soon recovered.
The doctor’s daughter fell in love with the ill young man as she tended to him. He, likewise, fell for his pretty, young nurse. After regaining his strength, it was hard to say goodbye. The girl wrote the right hand portion of a Chinese couplet for the student to match.
Green trees against the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring trees in the obscuration.
The boy was stymied and told the girl it would take time for him to write the second part of the couplet. He promised to do so after his examination.
The formerly-ill student set out again for the capital, wrote the examination, and won top spot. While being interviewed by the emperor the lad was tested again. Finish this couplet, the king told the scholar:
Red flowers dot the land in the breeze’s chase while the land colored up in red after the kiss.
The student realized the matching part of the emperor’s couplet, the right side, had been given to him by his love. He wrote it down and gave it to the ruler.
The emperor was pleased and appointed the young man as a minister in his court. He was given leave to visit his hometown before taking up his post. Love-struck as he was, the lad returned to the girl’s village and told her of the emperor, the couplet, and his new job.
The pair was married. Using red paper, they doubled the Chinese character, xi, and hung it on their wall to celebrate two events, double happiness for their wedding and the young man’s new job.
They probably lived happily ever after.
The Chinese character 喜 (xi, pronounced she) translates to: happy. The Double Happiness, symbol often used in calligraphy, is a pairing of the character xi (see images). It is commonly used at weddings, and in the homes of newlyweds as a decoration. (There are three still hanging in my apartment. The one on the door is useful in giving directions. ‘Look for the door with the big red thing on it,’ I say to would-be visitors).
The hong bao, the red envelopes containing money, given at weddings, often feature the double happiness symbol. The symbol is most often red, but sometimes black. It is never white, as that is the color of death, and used at funerals.
The inspiration for this came from Carrie at My Several Worlds and her great post on the Chinese Cinderella.
