“May Your
Halls be Filled With Gold and Jade” is a common Chinese New Year greeting, and
one that can literally become true if you happen to have a Chinese lithographed
tin house bank like the one below. This object combines many of my favorite
collecting interests: houses, toy banks, lithographed tin objects, and Chinese antiques.
This bank
represents a traditional Chinese house, the type that can still be found in the
countryside and occasionally in the city. The construction is of large bricks,
with stone windows. On top is a tile roof with an elaborate crest and decorative
gable ends. These fancy elements on real buildings are often picked out with
colorful glazed tile work, as indicated on this model. A favorite detail is
that it sits asymmetrically on its cobblestone base, thus giving it the tiniest
of yards.
Chinese New Year is under celebration in this
tin house, indicated by the red papers,
inscribed with auspicious sayings, pasted around the doors. These red papers
are still to be found absolutely everywhere, on old buildings as well as new
ones. Touchingly, even when these old houses are crumbling and uninhabitable,
the owning families will return each year to the family seat and paste up fresh
red papers.
 |
|
From Handbook of Old Taiwan Houses, by Kang,
Ruo-xi
|
The real house
above in Taoyuan County (near Taipei's International Airport) closely resembles
the tin example, down to the stone courtyard and lucky red banners.
On the doors
of this bank are the single characters for Spring and Luck, as Spring Festival is the alternate and more traditional name for Chinese New Year. Here they are displayed right side up, but
it also is traditional to display them upside down.
Above the
doors is the banner hoping that the house will be “filled with gold and jade,”
with the coin slot located conveniently just above. This greeting is still in
frequent use; there are also variants wishing you “gold and silver” and even
just plain gold.
 |
| The 'plain gold' version “A thriving business and Halls filled with gold”, on a transom in my own apartment, present when I moved in. |
The two
vertical side banners convey a specifically New Year’s sentiment. On the right
it says, “One night joins two paths” and on the left “The dawn separates two
years.” The word
used for path, wai, suggests the kind
of twisting paths found around mountains and rivers, thus symbolizing the
preceding and coming years.
Instead of the actual word for dawn, the adage interestingly employs the term
“fifth watch,” using an ancient Chinese system for dividing time. The night,
roughly 7:00 PM to 5:00 AM, was divided into five watches, with the fifth watch
covering the period from 3-5:00 AM, which was considered the true dividing line
between the days.
 |
|
The sides
show several window grills of the type usually made from heavy green tiles.
|
The back of
the bank features a stone window set with vertical bamboo posts. The
actual posts in these frequently seen windows are either stone carved like bamboo, or
sometimes colorfully glazed terracotta.
When I was
small, my father collected toy banks, both tin and cast iron, and family
excursions hunting for these were my introduction to collecting, so I was
doubly pleased to find this traditional Chinese example. Let me know if you ever had a
favorite toy bank, or special container for saving coins.
Chinese
sayings often wish the recipient wealth and prosperity. Their presence on a
coin bank helps to guarantee this by teaching the virtue of saving money. However
good fortune arrives, here's hoping that your halls this year will be well filled with
gold, silver and jade, in addition to peace and health.
=================================================================
[I hate to
distract readers with Chinese characters and accented transliterations, but
since rough translations cannot specify the original sayings, I place them here
for reference:
金玉滿堂 jīn yù mǎn táng (May
your halls be filled with gold and jade.)
福, 春 fú, chūn (luck, spring)
一夜連雙崴 yī
yè lián shuāng wǎi (One night joins two paths.)
五更分二年 wǔ
gèng fēn èr nián (The dawn separates
two years.)
生意興隆 金滿堂 shēng yì xīng
lóng, jīn mǎn tang (A thriving business
and Halls filled with gold.)]
=================================================================
