Then & Now | Paper charms and talismans in Hong Kong: better to be safe than sorry?

Paper charms, whether used as talismans to encourage good fortune or to prevent harm, have a millennia-long history in Chinese society. Known as fu, these papers were traditionally used for numerous ritual purposes.

Fu could be deployed as a protection against illness – the paper burnt and the ashes dissolved in a cup of water and then swallowed. On the principle that its consumption could cause little or no harm, and might actually do a lot of good, this practice was widely adopted. Burnt fu paper, apparently, could be especially effective in dealing with night­mares, other forms of psychological disturbance and the inexplicable tantrums that often afflict young children. One popular fu paper warded off the “hundred calamities” that could befall an individual without warning.

Purchase of such items for uses other than burning shortly afterwards was regarded at the very least as somewhat weird, if not actually sinister. Foreigners, of course, were exempt from these strictures as they knew no better.

An intriguing example of misplaced use of a perceived fu design perpetrated by a well-meaning foreigner occurred at one of Hong Kong’s leading institutional academic publishers a decade or so ago. The publisher, intrigued by cross-cultural artistic possibilities, deployed a stylised corporate logo designed by a Chinese artist famed for writing words in English that – at first glance – looked like Chinese characters. These were rendered in four-character couplets, which added to the visual curiosity. Only on close examination did the intended meaning reveal itself. The possibilities for catchy, quirky, postmodern cross-cultural interpretations offered by this design schema seemed too good to miss.