Tea box sign

[angie1976]

Hello I ve got a tea box to be given as a gift with a sign on it. Would be grateful if anybody could tell me what it actually says (not 'tea' apparently)
Also I m not sure whether it is Chinese or Japanese (I was told it is Chinese but...)
Xiexie!

[TheBigZaboon]

Nobody seems to be willing to bite. I'll take a chance, even though I think the character is a bit simplified, and shown in reverse in your thumbnail.

 

I don't know whether the box is Chinese or Japanese, and I don't know all the ins and out of the use of this character in the two languages, however, in Japanese, I think it is read "kotobuki," and has meanings such as "long life," etc. In Chinese, the character is read shou4, and can mean long life, or old age. Both Japanese and Chinese will have lots of different ways of expressing this idea, so the one-off explanation of the meaning of the character only has to do with the way you say it is used on the box.

 

Nothing to do with tea, but probably just good wishes for a long life going along with the box.

[Carl Chen]

The sign looks like 喜 or 壽.

[889]

The first response is correct: it's a calligraphic form of 寿 “long life", but reversed.

[OneEye]

Yeah, it's definitely a cursive form of 壽/寿, not 喜. 壽 is traditional Chinese, while 寿 is used in simplified Chinese and in Japanese, and is based on the cursive form.