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Where EAST meets the Northwest

NEW YEAR WISHES. A "Fai Chun" featuring a cute image of a tiger, top photo, designed by calligraphy artist Raymond Siu, is seen in Hong Kong. In the run-up to the Lunar New Year, calligraphers set up on the streets of Hong Kong to write ink-brush phrases on traditional red paper banners for homes and offices. Pictured in the bottom photo is 80-year-old calligraphy artist Chan King-fat. (AP Photos/Kin Cheung)

From The Asian Reporter, V32, #2 (February 7, 2022), page 11.

Hong Kong’s Lunar New Year calligraphy

By Alice Fung and Janice Lo

The Associated Press

HONG KONG — In the run-up to the Lunar New Year, calligraphers set up on the streets of Hong Kong to write ink-brush phrases on traditional red paper banners for homes and offices.

Called "Fai Chun" in Cantonese, the banners invoke hopes of good luck, prosperity, happiness, progress in studies — whatever one’s wish is for the Year of the Tiger, which started February 1.

Chan King-fat, 80, was perched on a plastic stool on a busy sidewalk in the Causeway Bay shopping district. His easel was a tiny folding table on which he wrote in delicate strokes on strips of red paper.

"For some businessmen, they want me to write ‘booming business.’ But usually, people want me to write ‘welcome good fortune,’" he said.

Chan’s work hung on makeshift strings. He sells the banners for 35 Hong Kong dollars ($4.50). He has been doing so for more than a decade.

Many are well-known phrases, while others are inventive, crafted to reflect the concerns of the times. Customers hang the banners around their front door and other doorways in their homes.

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