Published: 2014-03-08
Dear reader, do you remember these lovely Chinese glass cups? You might just have used one of these now vintage glass drinking cups in a day long past. We were so lucky (dance, dance!) to find a complete set of these glass cups on one of our rummages through second hand stores in Hong Kong. I grabbed them at once! You can't find these anymore! I'm not sure how old these are but at least 3 or 4 decades would be my guess. So here they are, so sweet and so lovely, an innocent and perfect reminder of a happy bygone Hong Kong Chinese era.When I say a we found a complete set, I mean that there were four cups and they completed the Chinese saying "四季平安" which means Four Seasons of Peace. The Chinese have a thing for four character proverbs. They love to use them. Every (and I mean EVERY!) occasion has its own Chinese four character proverb which can...umm...get kinda annoying. But as the Chinese saying goes, 人無完人, or 'No one is perfect'.
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| The first glass has the Chinese character 四which means Four. |
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| The second glass of the set has the Chinese character 季 which means Season. |
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| The third glass of the set has the Chinese character 平 which means Peace. |
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| The fourth and last glass of the set has the Chinese character 安 which means Safe. The two characters 平安 together means Peace. |
My little girl liked these pretty vintage glass cups so much! Once we got them safety home and cleaned she grabbed one of them to pour some water into. Whereupon her nervous 媽媽 (that's me!) grabbed it back and tried to explain (badly!) that some glasses and cups are for drinking water and some are not.
But alas, it was a case of 自相矛盾, or 'contradicting myself', which is actually 司空見慣, or 'occurring everyday'. But what else could I do? These vintage Chinese glass cups, it was for me 一見鍾情, or 'love at first sight'! How could my little girl understand that for her 媽媽 it was just 愛不釋手, or 'loving too much to part'?!
Hee-hee...those Chinese four character proverbs are something else! Anyways...these lovely vintage glass cups are now safely tucked away in our very crowded Chinese curio display cabinet. Sigh...how I love these precious old Chinese things!
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