Chinese Symbols

Chinese Symbols posts walk through characters and motifs that turn up in art, calligraphy, jewelry and tattoos. Articles cover the dragon, the phoenix, the crane and the deer for longevity, the bat for happiness because of the homophone, the double happiness character used at weddings, and the fu character pasted upside down at New Year. There are also notes on the eight trigrams from the I Ching and the difference between a symbol that has one meaning at home and another in a tourist gift shop. Each piece tries to explain what the original context was.