International lifestyle brand Shanghai Tang injects the Chinese culture of luck into its 2008 home collection.
Emblematic of Chinese culture’s devotion to good luck symbols, the launch date and time of the Beijing Olympics, 08/08/08 at 8:08 am was selected for the repetition of the most auspicious number in Chinese culture, “8”, which symbolizes prosperity and wealth. Commemorating this most unique, yet ubiquitous, feature of Chinese culture, Shanghai Tang launches its “Luck 2008” home collection to celebrate the 2008 Olympics.
Drawing on the time-honored visual vocabulary of luck in Chinese culture, the “Luck 2008” collection is choke-full of rubuses, or visual puns, one of the most pervasive ways Chinese usher luck into their daily lives.
For example, the collection design features luck symbols such as the bat, whose Chinese character is a homophone for the character for prosperity (“fu”). Thus, a bat signifies prosperity. Five bats surrounding the longevity symbol “shou” is a powerful motif for the “Five Good Fortunes,” longevity, wealth, health, love of virtue, and natural death.
Besides rebuses, the Luck Collection contains many other popular good luck symbols such as:
- The number 6, symbolizing prosperity as in mandarin, the number 6 is a homophone for “prosperity”.
- The number 9, symbolizing longevity as in mandarin, the number 9 is a homophone for “forever”
- The number 8 is the most auspicious number as it rhymes with the mandarin word for prosperity and wealth
- The coin which symbolizes harmony
- The lotus flower, eternity knot and shou symbols which symbolizes longevity and continuity
- Double happiness and the double fish symbols symbolize prosperity and joy, twice over.
- “Lu” symbolizes prosperity.
To read more, click here to download the Lexicon of Luck.
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