Chinese paint the town red

Spring Festival decorations, which mainly are red, become hot commodities as the most important Chinese festival approaches.

"From about Dec 20 to Jan 5, every day we have dozens of orders from retailers, each for 5,000 to 10,000 lanterns," said Chen Guangwen, a businessman in Liaoning province, whose older brother runs a lantern factory.

The Chinese traditionally beautify rooms during Spring Festival with red decorations, usually by pasting couplets praying for good fortune, hanging red lanterns in yards and rooms and putting flowers in living rooms.

Li Shugeng, a 60-year-old Beijing resident, said that the decorations for Spring Festival are on her "must-buy" list before the festival every year.

"I bought two pairs of couplets, and two stickers of the "Fu" character (Fu means luck and happiness in Chinese) this year," Li said. "Since my youth, I have decorated rooms in my home during Spring Festival. That's our tradition."

According to Chen, "Lanterns are our most popular goods for sale, and then come the couplets. They're all necessary for every family."

In Chinese culture, red represents joy and good luck. To decorate rooms with red-colored decorations during Spring Festival is to pray for good fortune in the new year.

"Adopting the concept of the five elements used in ancient Chinese cosmology, the color red represents a mythical animal Zhuque, which means 'red bird' in Chinese, the god animal of the south, which is the symbol of being energetic and vigorous," said Su Hua, a professor at the academy of art and design at Tsinghua University.