Lunar New Year has just started. I’ve been feeling people’s excitement for celebrating the new year since January.

Supermarkets in my town are also selling LNY’s decorations.

I am so grateful that we received a set of LNY home-decorations from our apartment.

It is so rare to have such an experience decorating our entrance door for the LNY celebration. I decorated it together with my children!

There were two square-shaped red papers. There was one Chinese character on each paper. This one that my daughter placed on the door said ” 福.”

By placing it on the entrance door, it means “Wishing for a lot of luck to come continuously.”

This Chinese character said”發（fa),” meaning that “You will become a rich, or you will have a lot of money.”

Our entrance has two doors, so we learned that we need to place the square shaped red paper in the middle of each side of the door. We also need to place the long decorations on each side, and have the last one placed on the very top.

The long decoration says “長長久久人健泰” in Chinese. It means that “All the auspicious luck will happen at home.”

To read Chinese characters that are written on each corner of this paper, you first start from the top, then read the bottom, and next read on the left side, and lastly the one on the right. So it looks like this;

「①長②發③其④祥」means that “You will stay safe and healthy all the time.”

The other long decoration says “祥瑞如意福満門.”

It means that “Happiness will happen very often.”

I also felt so excited for welcoming the Chinese New Year, after finishing these decorations.

Also we have been seeing CNY decorations like the picture below.

Let’s check them out one by one. ♪

The red dragon says “招财” means that you will have a lot of money in the future.

The blue dragon says “有闲” means having leisure time, free time, so that you will have a good living environment.

The green dragon says “平安” means wishing things go smoothly and without any dangers.

The picture above says “诸事顺遂,” meaning all things go smoothly, and you will achieve your goals and wishes.

“好柿發生” means “You will have a lot of luck in the future.” In the combination of these 4 Chinese characters, one of them is “發” and the other character “柿 (Persimmons)” actually have the same pronunciation as “fa.” In Japanese we also have similar play on words, for example “Congratulations” and “auspicious” can both b pronounced as “Omedetai.” We also say that Tai (鯛), as the sound of Tai and omede “tai” are the same. So we cook Tai fish for celebrations.

This one “幸福安康” means happy life, good luck, blessings, peace, and good health.

This one “前程似锦” means “you will have a wonderful life, and have a very bright future.”

I’ve seen a lot of persimmons “柿 (fa)” in the decorations, and the meaning also is wishing you wealth and to become rich, which is “發(fa)”.

This one “平安喜乐” means wishing that you will have no accidents or danger, and may have a lot of joy and happiness.

This one means “吉祥” means wishing you have good luck and is an auspicious sign.

I feel such feelings of joy and happiness, and feel very protected by seeing all these happy Chinese well wishes all across town.

This is a mini-broom. In Japan, we have a tradition to clean our house before the new year. In China, they also have the same tradition to welcome the new year.

With these stickers, I’ve been told that you can decide where you want to put these stickers around your house.

It was a great opportunity for us to learn about how to decorate, and also what the meanings are behind all these decorations for celebrating LNY!

Thank you for reading my blog!