{"id":76224,"date":"2026-02-04T17:47:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/04\/harry-potter-draco-malfoy-mascot-year-of-horse-china"},"modified":"2026-02-04T17:47:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:47:06","slug":"harry-potters-draco-malfoy-becomes-mascot-for-year-of-the-horse-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76224","title":{"rendered":"Harry Potter\u2019s Draco Malfoy becomes mascot for year of the horse in China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mandarin transliteration of character\u2019s name regarded as auspicious, prompting wave of memes and fan art<\/p>\n<p>Draco Malfoy, one of Harry Potter\u2019s most recognisable villains, has become an unlikely lunar new year icon across China, as fans embrace the character for the year of the horse.<\/p>\n<p>In Mandarin, Malfoy\u2019s name is transliterated as \u201cm\u01ce \u011br f\u00fa\u201d. The first character means \u201chorse\u201d while the final character, \u201cf\u00fa\u201d, means \u201cfortune\u201d or \u201cblessing\u201d \u2013 a powerful symbol found across lunar new year celebrations.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/04\/harry-potter-draco-malfoy-mascot-year-of-horse-china\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mandarin transliteration of character\u2019s name regarded as auspicious, prompting wave of memes and fan artDraco Malfoy, one of Harry Potter\u2019s most recognisable villains, has become an unlikely lunar new year icon across China, as fans embrace the charact&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2435,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,71,69,3501,2831,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-culture","category-film","category-harry-potter","category-lunar-new-year","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76225,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76224\/revisions\/76225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}