Good Luck

By Cui Yongyuan

A long time ago, we interviewed an old man in his seventies. He formed a habit of writing a diary. He would often write the character 福 (fú, meaning “good luck”) in it once a joyful thing happened to him on a particular day. For example, “Today I played chess with Lao Ma, and beat him three times in a row. Let me write here the character 福 for my good luck.” He never stopped doing this for a single day and had kept a large pile of such diaries.

Then I happened to read one page of these diaries, which said “Today I was hit by a car and went to the hospital.” I wondered how he could still feel lucky and write the character 福 on such an occasion. The answer lay in the following sentence: “After I was examined in the hospital, I was told that I was not deficient in calcium.” (FromHave Something to Say, Zhejiang People’s Publishing House. Translation: Cao Qing)

很早之前我们采访过一个老爷爷，70 多岁，他有一本日记本，每天遇到一件高兴的事儿，就会写上一个“福”。比如，“今天我跟老马下棋，连赢三盘，来个福字”，大概都是这种，一天没停过。这样的日记本已经积了厚厚一摞。

突然翻到一页，上面写着“今天被车撞了，去了医院”，我就很奇怪：都去医院了，怎么还能写个“福”？ “医院一检查， 说不缺钙。”（摘自《有话说》浙江人民出版社）