Chinese folk symbols guide. 19 auspicious symbols (福寿囍, 龙凤麒麟鲤鱼蝙蝠鹤, 八仙, 桃莲花牡丹竹梅菊兰松, 葫芦) with meaning, usage and origin, each card linked to the classical text or Palace Museum page it rests on.
Chinese Folk Symbols Guide (中国民俗符号图鉴)
How to use
Search a symbol
Try Simplified or Traditional Chinese ("福", "龍"), pinyin with or without tone marks ("fu", "fú"), or English ("dragon", "lotus").
Filter by category
5 categories: Character, Creature/Animal, Immortals, Plant/Flower, Object.
Read the card
Each symbol gives its meaning, where it is used and where it comes from; a legend is labelled as one.
Check the sources
The foot of each card links what it rests on: the classical text on Wikisource, or the Palace Museum (Beijing) object or glossary page.
Chinese folk symbols: designs read through puns and old texts
Chinese decorative designs are a way of wishing someone well. The Palace Museum in Beijing puts the fashion for them from the Ming and Qing dynasties on: designs that carry a wish by association or by a pun became very popular — peony for wealth and rank, peach for long life, bat for fortune, fish for plenty. A design is often much younger than the text it is traced to, so each card here keeps meaning, usage and origin apart, and the origin says only what the text or the museum actually records.
Five categories
(1) Characters: 福, 寿, 囍; (2) Creatures and animals: dragon, phoenix, qilin, carp, bat, crane; (3) Immortals: the Eight Immortals; (4) Plants and flowers: peach, lotus, peony, bamboo, plum, chrysanthemum, orchid, pine; (5) Objects: the gourd.
The Four Gentlemen and the Three Friends of Winter
The Four Gentlemen are plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum — the Palace Museum's chrysanthemum entry says it is "praised with plum, orchid and bamboo as the Four Gentlemen". The Three Friends of Winter are pine, bamboo and plum, plants that keep their vigour through the cold. Each has its own source text, on its card.
Puns
Many designs mean what they mean because of a pun: 蝠 (bat) sounds like 福 (fortune), so five bats around a 寿 make "five bats holding longevity"; 鱼 (fish) sounds like 余 (surplus); 葫芦 (gourd) sounds close to 福禄 (fortune and rank). The puns are checked in Mandarin; we have not checked other Chinese languages.
Usage varies by place
The meanings and origins on the cards come from Chinese classical texts and the Palace Museum in Beijing. Usage in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan can differ, and a card does not speak for every community's custom.
This tool explains what the designs mean; it makes no prediction. A design is a wish, not a forecast. The texts quoted are all in the public domain.
The bat is there because it sounds like fortune
囍 (double happiness) is two 喜 characters joined. The Palace Museum says only that it is "said to" have been devised by the Song statesman Wang Anshi — a legend. Porcelain made for the Tongzhi Emperor's wedding is covered in 喜.
The Nine-Dragon Wall at the Forbidden City was fired in 1772, when Emperor Qianlong rebuilt the Palace of Tranquil Longevity. With the walls at Datong and in Beihai Park it is one of China's "three great Nine-Dragon Walls". Nine, the highest yang number, stood for the emperor.
"Five bats holding longevity": five bats around a round 寿 character, using the 蝠/福 pun (Palace Museum). It is carved on the lattice doors of the Hall of Gathering Excellence and on a white-jade belt buckle in the museum.
"Dragon and phoenix bring good fortune": a carpet made for the Guangxu Emperor's wedding shows a dragon and a phoenix around a gold-embroidered double-happiness character (Palace Museum). The phoenix crown was the empress's ceremonial headdress.
"Three Friends of Winter" (pine, bamboo, plum) is a favourite theme of Chinese scholar painting. The name first appears in the late-Song writer Lin Jingxi's Record of the Five-Cloud Plum Lodge (13th century), where he plants a hundred plum trees to stand with tall pines and bamboo as his "three friends of the cold season". All three thrive in winter, embodying the Chinese scholar's ideal of "unwavering character".
The immortal peach comes from the Inner Biography of Emperor Wu of Han: the Queen Mother of the West gives the emperor peaches that "bear fruit once in three thousand years". The book is traditionally ascribed to Ban Gu; its author is unknown. The Classic of Mountains and Seas describes the Queen Mother with "a leopard's tail and tiger's teeth" and mentions no peaches.
"The qilin brings a child" was a common decoration on Qing porcelain, a wish for a child soon (Palace Museum). A legend in Wang Jia's Shiyi ji says that before Confucius was born "a qilin spat out a jade book at a house in Queli".
In Buddhist art the lotus stands for the Dharma, the Buddha-lands and the buddhas and bodhisattvas; Wang Yun's study in the Palace Museum Journal (2023 no. 2) reads its "unstained" as the Buddha's conduct and state. A Xuande-period gilt-bronze Guanyin in the museum holds a lotus stem and rests a foot on a lotus. Confucians love it too — Zhou Dunyi's On Loving the Lotus, "rising clean from the mud", is still widely quoted.
SG/MY/HK/TW temples carry dragons, phoenixes, qilin and carp on their roofs. In Taiwan many are 剪黏 (jiǎnniān): figures built on a wire frame and plaster core, then faced with cut porcelain shards or glass. Cheaper moulded pieces pushed the craft into decline from the 1960s, and in 2020 Taiwan's Ministry of Culture registered it as an important traditional craft.
Pairs with our Chinese colour symbolism, spring couplet and lunar festival calendar tools — together, a reference set for the Chinese cultural visual language.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Mandarin pun: the Unicode Unihan database reads both 倒 (upside down) and 到 (arrive) as dào, so an inverted 福 reads as "fortune has arrived". We have not checked whether it works in Cantonese. Whether the 福 on the front door should be inverted is disputed. Many households invert that one too. 冯骥才 (Feng Jicai), then chairman of the China Folk Literature and Art Association, said in 2006 that the front-door 福 belongs upright, to "welcome" fortune in, and 秦志法 of the Jiangsu Couplet Research Society said the same in 2016. Both put the inverted 福 on water vats, rubbish bins and cabinets inside the house. That is their view, not a rule.
Dragon: from the Han dynasty on, the Palace Museum says, the dragon stood for the virtuous ruler, and the emperor was the "true dragon, son of heaven". Phoenix: the auspicious bird of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, "when it is seen, all under heaven is at peace"; at court it belonged to the empress, whose ceremonial crown was the phoenix crown. Together they make "dragon and phoenix bring good fortune" — the Guangxu Emperor's wedding carpet shows the pair around a double-happiness character.
A pun: 蝠 (bat) and 福 (fortune) are both fú. The Palace Museum says punning designs became very popular from the Ming and Qing on, bat-for-fortune among them; five bats around a 寿 make "five bats holding longevity". It is a pun in the design, with no older textual source.
In the Palace Museum's collection: the 寿 character and "five bats holding longevity"; the peach ("peach — birthday wishes"); pine and crane ("pine and crane, lasting years", paired because both live long); the hidden Eight Immortals (a Qing cabinet carved with them "to wish long life"). That is how Qing court objects used them, not a rule for a birthday dinner today.
The oldest form is "climbing the Dragon Gate": the Book of the Later Han says a scholar received by Li Ying "was said to have climbed the Dragon Gate". Li Xian's Tang commentary explains it from the Sanqin ji: big fish gather below the Dragon Gate and cannot get up, and "those that get up become dragons". It says big fish, not carp; the carp version is later, and we have not traced where it first appears.
Each of the Four Gentlemen has a line that is always quoted: plum — Wang Anshi, "a few sprays of plum by the corner of the wall bloom alone against the cold"; orchid — School Sayings of Confucius, "orchids in deep forest are no less fragrant for there being no one there"; bamboo — Zheng Xie, "it bites into the green hill and will not let go"; chrysanthemum — Tao Yuanming, "picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence", and the Palace Museum says it flowers in autumn, defying the frost "like a recluse".
From the Palace Museum: 葫芦 sounds close to 福禄 (fortune and rank); its trailing vine and many seeds make it a wish for generation after generation; and it is a Daoist sacred object, the vessel for elixirs. Among the hidden Eight Immortals, the gourd stands for Li Tieguai.
At least one was: the Old Book of Tang records Zhang Guo as a recluse on Mount Zhongtiao under Empress Wu, "said by people of the time to have the secret of long life". The eight as a set, each with an emblem, appear in Wu Yuantai's Ming novel Journey to the East, whose chapter 48 is "The Eight Immortals cross the sea". We have not researched the other seven one by one.
Every card lists what it rests on, and you can open each one: classical texts in the Wikisource transcriptions (Book of Documents, Book of Songs, Book of Changes, Book of Rites, Analects, School Sayings of Confucius and others), objects and designs on the Palace Museum's collection and glossary pages. The Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Shiyi ji and the Inner Biography of Emperor Wu are themselves collections of myth and legend: citing them shows where a legend comes from, not that it happened.
No. Chinese auspicious designs run far beyond these; this tool covers 19 common ones. For more, see Terese Tse Bartholomew, Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2006), and the Palace Museum's glossary entry on auspicious designs.
Method & sources
How it computes
A reference lookup, not a calculation: 19 auspicious symbols, each card giving meaning, usage and origin with the sources it rests on (classical texts in Wikisource transcription; Palace Museum, Beijing, collection and glossary pages). Search matches Simplified or Traditional characters, pinyin with or without tones, or English; legends are labelled as legends and nothing is predicted (FolkSymbolsKernel).
What this tool implements
- Every claim on a card is in a source named on that card: a classical text, quoted as the Wikisource transcription has it, or a Palace Museum (故宫博物院) object or glossary page. Where no text supports an origin (囍, the bat pun, the gourd) the card says so.
- A design is kept apart from the text it is traced to: the Palace Museum dates the fashion for punning auspicious designs (蝙蝠—福, 鱼—余, 牡丹—富贵, 桃—祝寿) to the Ming and Qing, so a card never claims the design is as old as the classic it quotes.
- Legends are labelled: 囍 and Wang Anshi (the Palace Museum says only 据传), the qilin before Confucius's birth (王嘉《拾遗记》), the peach of three thousand years (《汉武帝内传》, author unknown), the Eight Immortals crossing the sea (Ming 《东游记》). Cultural reference only: no fortune, luck or prediction is produced.
- zh-TW cards are written in Traditional script with Taiwan usage and are searchable by either script; the suite holds them to OpenCC and the Taiwan vocabulary rules.
- Corrected 2026-10-19: 《竹石》 was credited to 苏东坡 (it is 郑燮's, Qing); the peach orchard was put in 《山海经》 (the story is 《汉武帝内传》); 「凤皇之神」 and 「君子如兰」 quoted texts that do not say them; the bat pun was traced to 《诗经》; 菊 was 「岁寒三友之四」; 鲤 was a pun on 利 (the pun is 鱼—余); the qilin had a dragon's head (Palace Museum: one horn, deer body, ox tail, scales); the phoenix meant rebirth; 八仙过海 was Yuan; a tattoo rule and a "world's only wedding character" were unsourced; 18 symbols were 19.
Sources
- Wikisource transcriptions, fetched 2026-10-19: 尚書·洪範 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/尚書/洪範 ; 周易·乾 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/周易/乾 ; 山海經·南山經 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/山海經/南山經 ; 禮記·禮運 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/禮記/禮運 ; 論語·子罕 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/論語/子罕第九
- Wikisource: 詩經·七月 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/詩經/七月 ; 詩經·麟之趾 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/詩經/麟之趾 ; 詩經·鶴鳴 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/詩經/鶴鳴 ; 孔子家語 卷五 (在厄) https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/孔子家語/卷五 ; 九歌 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/九歌
- Wikisource: 後漢書 卷67 (李膺) https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/後漢書/卷67 ; 舊唐書 卷191 (方伎·張果) https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/舊唐書/卷191 ; 漢武帝內傳 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/漢武帝內傳 ; 拾遺記 卷三 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/拾遺記/卷三 ; 西京雜記 卷三 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/西京雜記/卷三
- Wikisource: 吳元泰《東遊記》第48回 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/東遊記/第48回 ; 周敦頤《愛蓮說》 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/愛蓮說 ; 松窗雜錄 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/松窗雜錄 ; 鄭燮《竹石》 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/竹石 ; 王安石《梅花》 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/梅花_%28王安石%29 ; 陶淵明《飲酒》 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/飲酒二十首
- 故宫博物院 glossary: 吉祥图案 https://www.dpm.org.cn/lemmas/241317.html ; 麒麟 https://www.dpm.org.cn/lemmas/241903.html ; 秋菊 https://www.dpm.org.cn/lemmas/240408.html ; 岁寒三友 https://www.dpm.org.cn/lemmas/244613.html ; 松鹤延年 https://www.dpm.org.cn/lemmas/244785.html ; 龙在故宫 https://www.dpm.org.cn/architectural_art/246279.html
- 故宫博物院 collection: 五蝠捧寿带扣 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/jade/232335.html ; 储秀宫 https://www.dpm.org.cn/explore/building/236486.html ; 喜字纹奓斗 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/ceramic/227847.html ; 吉服袍 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/embroider/234496.html ; 凤冠 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/embroider/231038.html ; 炕毯 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/embroider/233714.html
- 故宫博物院 collection: 麒麟送子瓷板 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/ceramic/227762.html ; 暗八仙立柜 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/gear/230638.html ; 桃蝠纹瓶 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/glass/234679.html ; 观音坐像 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/religion/232928.html ; 葫芦瓶 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/ceramic/227612.html ; 葫芦式盒 https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/tinware/230800.html ; 九龙壁 https://www.dpm.org.cn/explore/building/236477.html
- 王云. 照其本也——佛教美术中的莲花意象研究. 故宫博物院院刊 2023(2): https://www.dpm.org.cn/Uploads/File/2023/02/22/u63f5b621e141b.pdf
Abridged — the full review record for this tool runs longer than the list above.
Pick up where you left off
Stored only in this browser — never sent to our servers.