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)

很早之前我們采訪過一個老爺爺，70 多歲，他有一本日記本，每天遇到一件高興的事兒，就會寫上一個“福”。比如，“今天我跟老馬下棋，連贏三盤，來個福字”，大概都是這種，一天沒停過。這樣的日記本已經積了厚厚一摞。

突然翻到一頁，上面寫著“今天被車撞了，去了醫院”，我就很奇怪：都去醫院了，怎么還能寫個“福”？ “醫院一檢查， 說不缺鈣。”（摘自《有話說》浙江人民出版社）