Every year before Chinese New Year's Day, people decorate their houses with flowers, pot plants, paper cuttings, New Year door couplets, red lanterns, and New Year pictures, and thefucharacter (福 'happiness').
Chinese New Year paper cutting is an indispensable part ofChinese New Year decoration. Here is a guide for how to make your own 福 (fu) Chinese New Year paper cutting.
SeeHow to Decorate for Chinese New Year: The Top 7 Decorations.
What You Need
- Red paper — one square of flexible paper
- Pencil
- Stapler
- Sharp scissors and/or craft knife
- Black marker (or other black coloring tool)
Instructions
1. Make sure your red paper is a perfect square shape by measuring it.
2. Fold it three times and crease the edge really well, following the steps below, so that you can make the decorative patterns on the four sides the same.
3. Draw the decorative patterns on the folded paper (remember which part is to be cut or carved off — maybe shading it in). Staple (along the edge that you will cut off) to force the eight layers of paper together tightly.
4. Use your sharp scissors or craft knife to cut off or to carve out the design and create a beautiful decorative pattern. Cut off the stapled edge last. Open it only after the cutting is finished.
5. Rotate the paper by 45° before you draw the 福, so it looks like a diamond. Pencil the outline of thefucharacter in the middle.
6. Lastly color in thefucharacter in black, and your Chinese New Year paper cutting is done!
An Upside-DownFu(福)
Should You Put YourFuUpside Down?
A 福 (fu) character is a indispensable decoration item for every Chinese family's New Year decoration.
Fu(福) meansgood fortune, blessing, and happiness.You will see that many Chinese people put their 福 (fu) upside down, no matter whether on the doors or on the windows.
This interesting tradition came from a romantic mistake...
One Chinese New Year's day (the exact year is not known now), a family attached their 福 (fu) upside down as a careless mistake. On the first day of Chinese New Year, their first guest came to visit, and saw the upside-down 福, and kindly shouted to them: "你们的福倒了!" ('Yourfuis upside down!').
倒 (dao /daoww/) means 'upside down', but has the same pronunciation as 到 (dao /daoww/), which means 'to arrive'. So "你们的福倒了" could be understood as ‘Yourfu(blessing) has arrived' (你们的福到了).
人们喜欢,另一种意义they started fixing theirfudecoration upside down to "invoke" an arrival of blessings.
