Miscellaneous Week: My Chop

In olden days, folks just came with a lot more accessories. And rituals. For example, in China, even though the art of calligraphy was revered, you still had a seal with your name or symbol on it that you used to dip into red ink or cinnabar paste to stamp on official documents. This seal was known as a “chop.”

I have a chop. Somebody brought it back from China for me, but I don’t remember who anymore (sorry). It’s made of stone with a horse (I’m a fire horse — whoever picked this out for me really knew me well) on top. This seal supposedly is the phonetic version of my name (really, somebody took a lot of care to bring me this back as a present and I am the world’s worst human for not remembering who gave it to me). Unless I find out that this seal actually translates to “world’s worst human” and then I wouldn’t feel so bad.