The five playful friendly mascots of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics are named Fuwa, literally the children endowed with auspiciousness and good fortune. Fu literally means auspiciousness, good fortune, luck, prosperity, blessing or happiness; and wa literally means child.

Fuwa are probably the most meaningful Olympic mascots in the history. Actually, when designers design them, they put many symbolic meanings into these five mascots that represent traditional culture and natural characteristics of China, which might be very difficult for foreigners to understand.

Fu usually appears as a cultural symbol to express people's wishes for the coming new year. In oracle bone carvings, the Chinese character Fu looks like two hands placing a jar of wine onto an altar. The hands are offering wine to the Gods in the hope of obtaining blessing. Hence the meaning "blessing."

The tradition of pasting the character "Fu" on walls, doors and doorposts has existed among the people for a long time. According to Menglianglu, a book recording the folk customs in the Song Dynasty (960-1127), people at that time had already been practicing the tradition. A large Fu character would often be found at the entrances of houses to bring a continuous flow of good luck through the door.

The character can either be written or printed. The accompanying patterns usually include a variety of themes like the god of longevity, a birthday peach, a carp, a dragon and a phoenix as well as other themes. The character written on paper can be pasted both normally and upside down, because in Chinese the "up-sided Fu" is homophonic with "Fu has arrived (fu dao le)", both being pronounced as "fu dao le."

This good luck symbol is a popular decoration during Chinese New Year. The bat, or bian fu in Chinese, is also a symbol of good fortune. The fu in bat sounds the same as good fortune. A red bat is an extremely good fortune symbol.

This is a rebus for "Five Blessings Surround Longevity" (wu fu peng shou in Chinese). The five blessings (wu fu) are: longevity, wealth, health, love of virtue, and natural death.

Five bats (representing each blessing) surrounding the stylized Chinese character for longevity shou is a rebus for wu fu peng shou, an extremely powerful motif for good fortune and longevity. Five bat motifs are very auspicious and hence very popular.

Basically, the names of the five Fuwa: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and NIni altogether in Chinese mean “welcome to Beijing.” The images of Fuwa come from the auspicious animals of fish, Giant Panda, (Olympic flame), Tibetan antelope and swallow.