As the Chinese saying goes, "there are three lucky stars in the heaven, and accordingly, there exist three happy things in the world -prosperity, status and longevity." The Star of Prosperity seems to be the first of the three lucky stars, however there are many different versions about the origin of this well-known star of felicity in the legends. Some says he was a heavenly official coughed up by the celestial Supreme Being, and some says he is Yang Cheng, a governor of I)aozhou Prefecture, Hunan Province, in the Han Dynasty. It is said that at that time Emperor Han Wu demanded the Daozhou Prefecture present him a group of dwarfs as an annual homage. When Yang Cheng assumed office, he sent a message to the throne to curtly inform the emperor there were only short persons but no short slaves, namely dwarfs, in Daozhou Prefecture. This angered Emperor Han Wu but Yang Cheng had done good to stand up for his people. The Daozhou people made him the Star of Prosperity in appreciation.

There are also many legends about the Star of Status. Some says he is the North Star in the heaven, namely the Star of the Literature Master, who presides specia11y over the luck of scholarly honor, official rank, fame and wealth in the world. And some says he is SunYazi of the Jin Dynasty (266 ~ 3l6).

The Star of Longevity is different from the stars of Prosperity and High Status. He never wears official robes and always meets everyone with a happy smiling face which makes him popular. Some says he is the Aged Star of the South Pole yet others say he is the eldest of the twenty-eight zodiac constellations but in the end, he helps people to live longer. It is interesting to note that the Longevity Star originally did not 1ean on a wa1king stick. Up to the Eastern Han Dynasty 25 ~220, they started a holiday to respect the aged. Every o1d male over seventy was bestowed a jade walking staff with a turtledove-headed figure from the imperia1 court. Since then, the Old Star of Longevity, following the custom of the land began to carry a dragon-headed walking stick.

The calligraphers of the past ages in China focused their attention on the study of both Chinese characters: fu (prosperity) and shou (1ongevity) because enjoyment of the two signify happy lives for human beings. As to the character shou (longevity), calligraphers concentrated much more effort in the study of how to write it out in various forms and different styles; they wrote it again and again, and created scrolls (or pictures), consisting of one hundred, even one thousand varieties of the character shou in a single piece of writing. They had also created a picture of ten thousand characters for shou.

The Chinese search for prosperity and longevity has no boundaries and more is considered better, such that both characters have evolved from writing scripts into picturesque designs, hence the Chinese characters have a wide range of choices to express their abilities in homonyms and imagery metaphors. A bat represents good fortune, a sika deer signifies a high position and pine trees and cranes are both symbols of longevity.

As for the peaches, it is said in Chinese mythology that the immortal peach trees of the Grandmother Wang in Heaven bloom once every two thousand years and bear fruit once for the same length of time, hence peaches are considered the fruit of longevity. All the above are chosen auspicious designs and propitious things, which the Chinese people have dedicated their efforts for more than a thousand years, for nearly one hundred generations. And, in quite a few regions inhabited by the minority nationalities, such as the Miao, Bai, Yi, Tujia, Zhuang, etc, there are also the footprints of the three lucky stars left.