INTRODUCTION

Good luck characters in Chinese.

In ancient time all human being started with picture characters to record their message.   Picture is not related with language.   Gradually human being change to use alphabet to record their language.    This is the most human culture today.   There is one culture still use the picture character.   That is Chinese culture.   Some of the Chinese character still preserve strong picture nature, such as mountain, farm land, door, mouth, rain, car.   Some Chinese character has weaker (changed circle to square) picture nature, such as sun, moon, eye etc.  

Many people use Chinese character as an icon for decoration.   The most favored characters are good luck, happiness, love, longevity etc.    This web site will provide some Chinese characters for you to use.    The author will choose good word, write in Chinese, state the meaning in English.   Each character has a sequence displayed to tell how to write this character. (so that how to write it is not a puzzle to you.)   If there are ten strokes in one character, there will be ten square frames (just for learning purpose) to accomplish the ten strokes.   Previous strokes are in black color.   Current stroke is in red color.   Stroke direction is marked with a blue curve / line.  

Each Chinese character is written in a square.   Usually start from upper-left corner to lower-right corner.   When combine many Chinese characters to form a composition, traditionally write first from top to bottom and then from right to left.   When write a banner, it is from right to left.   Most Chinese write with right hand, so Chinese favor to start from right to left.   For scientific text book, Chinese characters can be printed from left to right.    The banner used, FU, LU, SHOU, HSI in the web page GOODLUCK.HTM is from left to right in order to match English.  

These downloadable files are designed for character size no more than one square inch.   It is not suitable for large size applications.
Unlike writing with ball pen or marker which has constant width.   The characters are written with Chinese brush.   A straight stroke may have different width, especially at the turning corner.    This is Chinese traditional writing.

The author is not a professional calligrapher.   My calligraphy is just average.   The stroke sequence may differ slightly from some other Chinese hand writing.    All I want to do is to do my best to show you the lucky word, good word and positive word so that you can use it for decoration.

Each character has a phonetic spelling to tell approximately how to pronounce that character.   Each Chinese phonetic symbol has five tones.   For example the pronounciation BA can have BA (1), BA (2), BA (3), BA (4) and BA (0) five tones.   The character EIGHT pronounce BA (1).   This web site concentrate the writing work.   Pronounciation will be provided up to the phonetic spelling plus tone.    No sound element will be supplied.

Consider pronounciation and tone as a unit, above BA has five units. There are about 400 to 500 phonetic units used in Chinese language.   The daily used popular Chinese has about 3,000 to 5,000 characters.    (Total in the range 40,000 to 50,000)   It is naturally that many characters (different stroke sequence) share same pronounciation.   In English FOUR and FOR is a similar example.
If use single phonetic unit to express one concept, it is only possible to express 500 ideas.   But the number of concept is much more than 500.   Most phrase, or term, used in Chinese language use TWO phonetic unit to express that idea.   This way it is possible to express 500 x 500, approxmitely 250 thousnads concepts.   Only very frequently used concept use just one phonetic unit, such as I, WANT, EAT, DRINK, GO, COME etc.   Majority concept use TWO phonetic unit to express, such as BEAUTY, QUIET, RESPECT, HAPPY etc.   Some use three or more phonetic units to express.   Do not be surprised if you see the following double expressions later in the group introduction.  

• HAPPY in Chinese is KUAI-LEH, both KUAI and LEH mean happy.
• BEAUTY in Chinese is MEI-LI, both MEI and LI mean beauty.
• QUIET in Chinese is AN-JIN, both AN and JIN mean quiet.

The expression SEQUENCE is important.   Both KUAI and LEH means HAPPY.   The string KUAI-LEH is HAPPY in Chinese.   BUT the wrong order LEH-KUAI is NOT understandable when in verbal communication.

Not all two phonetic unit expression has repeat meaning.   Actually most have different meaning.   For example
THING in Chinese is DONG-HSI, DONG means east, HSI means west.   EAST-WEST combined to form a two phonetic unit concept THINGS.
EAST is expressed with DONG-FANG.   DONG is east, FANG is direction.
Both EAST and WINTER are pronounced DONG.   Single phonetic character for THING is WU (4).
Example of three and more phonetic unit concepts are

• JIOU-TA-TSE where JIOU is foot, TA is to step upon, TSE is vehicle.    Combines to express bicycle.
• MIOU-BEE-SEN-HWA where MIOU (4) is wonderful, BEE (3) is pen, SEN (1) is to grow, HWA (1) is flower.   It implies one's ability for exquisite writing. (Even his pen, or paper, will grow a beautiful flower.)

Please choose from the following

• Good Luck Home Page.
• To see how to set up this package.
• To down load characters.
• To send suggestions to the author.

Pandar    July 18, 1996.    End of page.