As you may know, I’m learning Chinese (it’s going quite well thanks, not necessarily as hard as its reputation would have you believe). That means I’m quite interested to get things like this, being a New Year card/powerpoint/atrocity that Marion got from somewhere.

So what’s with the pigs? It’s the Year of the Pig, obviously. But why the Golden (i.e. auspicious) Pig. The stuff on the ground there are golden shells (the money of old). It seems that people can’t agree on whether we are now in Fire Pig, Gold/Metal Pig or some other Elemental Pig. If you are really interested, and can keep up with a little 汉字，try following me into the depths of this thread, on the ChinesePod forum.