- What’s in a name? A lot of good fortune, according to the Chinese.
Whenever Draco Malfoy shows up in the Harry Potter series, you know Harry is in for some misfortune. In China, however, he has turned into a bizarre symbol of good luck.
China is currently busy preparing for the upcoming Lunar New Year (also known as Chinese New Year). A big part of the preparations is attaching paper decorations all over the place, from private homes to public buildings.
This year, many of those decorations sport the smirking face of Draco Malfoy.
The unpleasant-if-not-downright-evil wizard has turned into a symbol of prosperity for the coming year. Although Draco’s family is certainly rich in the books, his newfound fame has nothing to do with his actual fortune.
Instead, it’s all about his name. The way “Malfoy” is rendered in Chinese characters has turned his last name into a wish of good fortune in the year of the horse.
Funnily enough, actor Tom Felton, who portrayed Draco in the Harry Potter movies, is aware of his fame. He has been reposting some of the decorations featuring his face on social media, much to the delight of his Chinese fans.
“Bring me some fortune in 2026, young master,” has become a catchphrase for people commenting on his posts.
An Auspicious Name
The Lunar New Year is arguably the biggest celebration of the year in China, with an entire week marked off the calendars as a public holiday. Due to the auspicious character, the Chinese begin making preparations for the New Year well in advance.
A huge part of those preparations is hanging posters, stickers, and other paper ornaments with messages and symbols wishing for good luck in the coming year. This year, however, many of those decorations are sporting a strangely familiar person.
The face of Draco Malfoy, as portrayed by Felton, graces posters across China.
It seems odd, but there’s a rather fun and creative reason for Malfoy’s presence on the decorations. It’s all due to his name.
When the Harry Potter books were translated into Chinese, Malfoy’s name was rendered using three characters that — when transliterated into the Latin alphabet — read “Ma Er Fu.” This spelling tickles the Chinese penchant for wordplay in just the right ways.
The first character, “Ma,” means “horse.” The upcoming year is the year of the horse in the Chinese zodiac calendar.
Meanwhile, the last character, “Fu,” means “blessing” or “fortune.” When “Ma Er Fu” is read together, it can be understood as “horse bringing fortune.”
But wait, there’s more! In Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy belongs to House Slytherin, which is symbolized by a snake. And it just so happens that the year that is about to end was the year of the snake.
All put together, young Tom Felton’s smirking mug has turned into shorthand for a wish for good luck as the zodiac wheel moves from snake to horse.
Big in China
Although seeing Draco Malfoy all over China is unexpected, it’s not that odd, all things considered. While Harry Potter isn’t as big over here as it used to, the series is still hugely popular in China.
According to CNN, the books’ Chinese publisher noted that it has sold more than 10 million copies. Additionally, when the remastered version of the first Harry Potter movie was released in 2020, it made more than $27.6 million in theaters, despite coming out at the height of the COVID pandemic.
As such, once the Malfoy decorations started popping up on Chinese social media platforms, they went viral almost immediately. The more people shared images of their Malfoy decorations, the more people imitated the trend, and the wider it spread.
Eventually, the news of Malfoy’s sudden fame reached Tom Felton himself. The man seems to have embraced his role as a herald of good luck, as he’s been reposting several pictures of the decorations on his accounts.
That, in turn, amused Chinese social media users to no end. Currently, there are thousands of messages and comments out there praising Felton under a hashtag translating to “Malfoy himself is 100% hilarious.”
Malfoy Upside Down
If you go looking for the Malfoy pictures, you’ll notice that in many cases, his face is plastered on walls upside down. That’s not carelessness or a mistake, but an interesting quirk of Chinese culture.
It’s a strong tradition in China to decorate homes around the Lunar New Year with fuzi. They are small squares on red paper, on which people print or write wishes for good fortune.
The Chinese often hang fuzi upside down in another expression of wordplay. Although they’re spelled differently, the phrase “upside down” in Mandarin Chinese is pronounced the same as “arrival.”
So, by hanging the tags the wrong way around, the Chinese are hoping to attract good fortune and have it “arrive” at their homes.
Who would’ve thought the blond jerkwad from Hogwarts would become such a phenomenon decades after the movies came out?
Draco Malfoy is not the only Western movie character that’s recently blown up in China. Read our article about how Zootopia 2 started a craze of people buying venomous pit vipers as pets.