About the wealthy character 富

Teaching my kids about the lesson on building wealth. This their first lesson and will continue to remind them again and again as they grow up.

Ok, the ancient Chinese selected this character 富 to describe the meaning of wealthy or rich. What is interesting about this character is that they choose to use the character 田 (farm or paddy field) at the bottom and not other character such as 石 (rock) or 河 (river) ?

Deciphering the meaning of 富 requires one to pay attention on how the ancient Chinese use their wisdom in selecting the correct pictures to describe the word - wealthy.

In order to be wealthy, one must have a roof over his or her head and able to feed from the paddy field harvest. Since the farm is able to regenerate over and over again...that person is wealthy as long the regeneration process is there. It emphasizes on the "regeneration" ability.

Of course in today's terminology, one can be wealthy without actually owning a farm or paddy field, but owning asset that has the ability to generate wealth over and over again. Assets such as websites that rake in money regardless you actively working or not, coin operated washing machines business or owning stocks that give good returns and dividends over time.

Interesting enough, the character for oil 油 looks very similar to 田. To decipher how the oil character is formed - one just have to poke the farm with a stick and oil(denoted by the 3 ticks on the left side of 油) will flow out.

To be truly rich, one must strive to acquire as much 田 as possible.