double happiness

囍

ㄒㄧˇ xǐ

Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.

Script

Characters

Layout

The doubled joy character pasted up at weddings. It is a decorative symbol rather than an ordinary word.

Before you commit

Choose with care囍 is specifically a marriage symbol. Worn on the body it reads as a wedding decoration, and to many readers as announcing that you are married or about to be.

Cultural noteIt is pasted on doors and windows in red paper at weddings and appears on wedding sweets and quilts. Outside that setting it looks out of place rather than merely bold.

At small sizesTwo joy characters side by side, twenty-four strokes in a wide square. It needs generous size, and the symmetry punishes any wobble.

Meaning

Double happiness; the wedding symbol made of two joy characters.

Read shuangxi, and used almost only as a wedding decoration.

Other characters for “double happiness”

What to do next

Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.

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