This is a Chinese idiom which means "five happy things come together to your house". The character "五"(wu) means "five", "福"(fu) means "happiness", "臨"(lin) means "come", and "門"(men) means the gate or door of a house.

The Chinese character for "bats" is "蝠". It is a different character and of course has different meaning with "福", but their pronunciations are the same. That is why we associate "bats" with "happiness".

Since it is hard to express "happiness", the Chinese use five bats to represent the idiom. It could be a painting, a sculpture, or just a little decoration hung on the wall.


▲ When I was small, I took the bats for butterflies. The bats in the arts and crafts are beautiful and elegant, are't they?

Since most people don't like bats, some people use other Chinese characters with similar pronunciation such as "狐" (hu, means foxes), "葫" (hu, a kind of squash), or "虎" (hu, tigers), but only "蝠"(fu, bats) has exactly the same pronunciation as "福" (fu, happiness).



Though "五福臨門" is a common idiom, most Chinese just know it means "good fortune", but don't know its literal meaning -- which FIVE good things? Frankly speaking, I don't know, either. I just googled it and found the answer. Here they are:

1. long and happy life,
2. wealth and respect,
3. good health and peaceful mind,
4. kindness and generosity,
5. good death (knowing the time to die and having a peaceful death without desease, accedeint, and worry).

In Chinese, they are 長壽 (chang-shou), 富貴 (fu-quey), 康寧 (kang-ning), 好德 (how-der), and 善終 (shan-zhong).

If all of these 5 things happen TOGETHER to someone, he/she is really lucky and surly be happy, and this is what the idiom implies. Owing one or two is good but not perfect. For example, if someone is long-lived but poor, he/she will not be happy for sure. If someone is rich but unhealthy, he/she will not happy, either.

The first four things of the list are easy to understand. However, the last one ("good death") is very special and interesting. I'm very amazed because Chinese people always avoid talking about death. I don't know why it appears here. (Maybe it is the reason why most Chinese don't know the real meaning of the idiom. Maybe their teacher don't want to talk about death.) Anyway, it is really a good thing if someone could have a peaceful death. (By the way, there is another Chinese idiom "不得好死", which means somebody cannot get a peaceful death. It is a very serious curse.)

Among these five happy things, "kindness and generosity" is the most important. It is believed that virtue is the base of all kinds of happiness. The Chinese believe that one may earn his own happiness by doing good things.

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典故出自《書經.洪範》:「一曰壽、二曰富、三曰康寧、四曰攸好德、五曰考終命。」
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