இ “人日” *Human Day*

The future is so extremely bright..

Today is 正月初七是“人日” or *Human Day* or Man-days, the seventh day of the first month of the lunar year, also known as "Man wins Festival", "people feast", "Population Day", "seven people" and so on. Anyway “Happy Birthday Everybody” its our birthday and the future of this Year of Rabbit is gonna be so bright even the rabbit needs to wear sunglasses. Sorry for the late post got held up with the reformatting of my laptop thought to give my lappie a hopping start on the opening day of work.

According to the old tradition in Guangzhou, China on the 7th day of the first month of the Lunar Calendar, the villagers of Chaozhou-Shantou have this custom of seven dishes to give them the auspicious colors on the 7th day of Chinese New Year – (1) Onion (2) Garlic (3) Lettuce (4) Celery (5) Mustard (6) Spring Cabbage (7) White radish carrot and each vege would have a special meaning. Over time the chefs in *Malaysia and Singapore (*in alphabetical order as both countries are at loggerheads claiming to be the very first*) capitalised the idea of the 'seven dishes' and 'tossing' the 鱼生 {yúshēng} or yeesang in Cantonese. Apparently the latest news I saw over the TV, Shanghai is beginning to catch on the tossing fever and restaurants are rolling out 鱼生 {yúshēng} from RMB100 per dish.

A four-leaf clover
Image courtesy of wikipedia

The Chinese people have their ways to rely on vegetables to get lucky and prosper what about the Westerners? Heard of rabbit's foot, four leaf clover, horse shoe or good luck charm? Even my Malay associate do believe in leaf power which she gave me a kind of *daun* leaf (sorry cant remember the name) to be kept in my pocket during our powerpoint presentation, said to give us a better edge in winning the contract which we did. Well well believe it or not it could be the leaf power, or our great product and superb presentation? Myth or superstition?  If you beleaf in it, it will come. Bananaz Beleaf It Or Not!

Now who is always lucky? Sir Cliff Richard don't need a four leaf clover, rabbit's foot or good luck charm or even fengshui but Lucky Lips..

♫..I know I just can't lose

When they spin that wheel of fortune

All I do is kiss my chips

and I know I'm bound to win, yeah

'cause I've got lucky lips..♫

Fengshui do play an important role in one's person luck and we have read so much from blogger panda foongpc on his fengshui tips by Lilian Too & Joey Yap. Something interesting about the one word in fengshui. Are these two Chinese words in simplified version the same ~ 风=凤? Maybe to those 'mangoes' aka 'Chinese educated Chinese' would spot the difference almost immediately but not Bananas. Anyway dont *small look* 小看xiǎo kān, and underestimate the Bananas even though they may not know the meaning but quite certain some may have noticed something is amiss. These are totally two different words with merely one stroke lesser in the word on the left.

They sound almost the same, look quite like twins but certainly and absolutely 风≠凤 thus the below is self explanatory.

A stroke could be deadly to a person just as deadly in writing towards the meaning of {风 fēng [風] as in Wind} and {凤 fèng [鳳] as in Phoenix}, as its a heaven and earth disparity in meaning. Never to take things for granted with the Chinese simplified version of writing. It could be disastrous if left unchecked. Imagine on an auspicious day for the installation of signboard it could end up as bad omen if the signboard needs to be taken down for amendment due to misspelling. Would expect the worst three little words of unhappiness ~ 'Choy! Choy! Choy!'

Posted in: Human Day