Bat (fu)

In Chinese art the bat is a sign of happiness and good fortune, because its name, fu (蝠), sounds like fu (福), good fortune. Five bats together stand for the five happinesses.

Chinese mythology and symbols. Also called bat fu, bat good luck china, bats chinese art, chinese bat symbol, five bats, wufu.

Meaning

The bat is a pun. Chinese has few syllables for a great many characters, W. Perceval Yetts explained to the China Society in 1912, which gives wide scope for the rebus: a picture of one thing standing for another word with the same sound. Happiness, fu, is shown by its homophones, the bat and the “Buddha’s hand” citron. So the V&A can say of a porcelain dish of the Yongzheng period (1723–35) that “the bat is synonymous with happiness, while the peach stands for longevity”, and the dish’s five flying bats stand for the five happinesses. The Cleveland Museum of Art notes of a mirror of about 1800 that “the five–bat design signals a wish for good fortune”. In this tradition the bat is a creature of luck, painted on porcelain and cast on wedding mirrors.

Origin and history

Yetts read a whole plate of his own as a message in rebus: longevity in a character, a peach and the sacred fungus, happiness in the bat and the citron, many children in a pomegranate. Giving such a plate, he wrote, was wishing the recipient happiness, long life and many children. The same pairing of bats and peaches is on the V&A’s Yongzheng dish, where a peach tree grows from a cliff over the sea and bats fly out over the waves, and the museum reads the scene as the birthday wish “May your happiness be as the Eastern Sea and may you live to be as old as the Southern Mountain”. E. T. C. Werner, in 1922, described the god of longevity riding a stag, a peach in his hand and a bat flying above his head; the stag and the bat, he explained, both stand for fu, happiness.

Bats on wedding things

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s brass mirror of about 1800 puts five bats with scrolled wings round a large Double happiness (囍) character, on an object probably made for the wedding ceremony. The fu pun also turns up at the New Year, when the character 福 is pasted upside down (upside-down fu).

Five bats

Bats come in fives on Chinese wares. The V&A’s Yongzheng dish has five bats flying round the peach tree, which the museum reads as the five happinesses, and the Cleveland mirror has five stylised bats with scrolled wings round its central character. Paired with the peach, as on the V&A dish, the bat joins happiness to long life (peach of immortality).

Sources

Symbolism in Chinese Art (W. Perceval Yetts, 1912), W. Perceval Yetts, “Symbolism in Chinese Art”, read before the China Society, 18 January 1912 (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1912), The China Society, pp. 26–27
Myths and Legends of China (E. T. C. Werner, 1922), E. T. C. Werner, Myths and Legends of China (London: George G. Harrap, 1922), Project Gutenberg ebook 15250, George G. Harrap, ch. VI, The God of Longevity
Dish with bats and peaches (Victoria and Albert Museum), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, dish painted with bats and peaches in enamels, Yongzheng mark and period (1723–35), Victoria and Albert Museum, summary description and catalogue entry
Mirror with Handle, Decorated with “Double Happiness” and Five Bats (Cleveland Museum of Art), Cleveland Museum of Art, Mirror with Handle, Decorated with “Double Happiness” and Five Bats, workshop of Tang Wanheng, c. 1800, 1995.401, Cleveland Museum of Art, Did you know?; image description

The same shape elsewhere

Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

Added October 10, 2026.

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