Monday, 23 January 2012

BUYING PANTS FOR PROSPERITY IN THE NEW YEAR


During the Chinese New Year, there will be many Chinese who would be buying new pants or trousers as the Cantonese word for this garment is Fu which has the same sound as Prosperity.  There are some people who say that buying pants is inauspicious as they think that Fu is similar in sound to bitter. This is not true as Chinese is a tonal language and there are 4 different tones for each word.  The tone for bitter and pants are not the same in Cantonese.  By the way, Cantonese has 6 tones instead of 4.  So for the Cantonese buying pants for the new year is indeed auspicious.

2 comments:

山城大熊 said...

Even the under wear needs to be new too!

Miss Cheah said...

Yeah! So are yours red.