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A bat with outspread wings.
Also known as: Bat motif China, Five bats motif
A Chinese decorative motif carrying a wish for good fortune, because the word for bat is a homophone of the word for fortune.
Means fortune because 蝠, bat, and 福, fortune, are both pronounced fú; the motif is a rebus rather than a belief about bats, which is why it does not travel and why a Western reader meeting it on a porcelain bowl reads it as ominous.
Contexts: History
Appears in fives to stand for the five blessings — long life, wealth, health, love of virtue and a natural death — which is a specific enumerated set rather than a general wish, and the count is the part of the motif that carries it.
Contexts: History
A bat seen from above with wings spread symmetrically to either side and the wing membranes drawn as scalloped curves.
The other fortune motif it sits beside, and the contrast in how each works.