The Evening Standard’s coverage of May’s China trip gleefully reported that on a visit to a school the PM held “fu”, the Chinese character for fortune, “upside down, earning confused looks from people at the Busy Bee center, including the young girl they were chatting to”. The China Daily  suggests otherwise

Fu means luck or happiness in Chinese. However, it is actually a custom to hang the character “fu” in reverse on doors or in windows, as it means good luck will arrive, as “upside down” rhymes with “arrive” in Chinese… This is downright correct, holding fu reversed shows people’s wishes for good luck… It is the newspaper that knows little about Chinese culture…

Guido can’t read Chinese so it is hard to know which newspaper is telling the truth. Whereas one is a source of relentlessly slanted political propaganda against the British government, the China Daily is a professionally produced newspaper edited by a longstanding editor. Am going to go with China Daily being right about Chinese characters…

This error is not necessarily due to George Osborne, senior sources in the building tell Guido he has barely been seen since November. He took several weeks off in December, has been giving giving lucrative speeches in the US and was in Davos all week a fortnight ago. There was no sign of him last week either. Hacks are speculating that problems in George’s private life are taking up a lot of his time…