Question: What does the Chinese character on the Tiger's face mean and why is it there?
Answer: As the Year of the Tiger approaches, you’ll likely see many images of the tiger in decorative forms for Spring Festival celebrations. Most representations of the tiger have a special Chinese character stylized on the forehead: 王
This character, "wang", means king. In China, the tiger is king of the jungle and it is believed that the black stripes in the orange fur illustrate this. Therefore, from kids' paintings of the beast to caricatured New Year's wall decorations, the wang character is likely to be on every tiger forehead you see.
