When koi is used as an Internet buzzword, it represents good luck, so many people forward koi in the hope that it will bring them good luck.

Koi have an extremely long lifespan, living 60-70 years, and are said to bring good luck to their owners, making them a popular feng shui fish and ornamental pet.

Koi has been associated with the legend of "Carp leaping over the Dragon Gate" in China, where it is said that a carp that can jump over the Dragon Gate Falls on the Yellow River can become a dragon. In Japan, carp represent determination and valor. Their whiskers also represent wisdom and learning.

Traditional carp tattoos are usually on the forearm or leg, while dragon tattoos are on the back, in the hope that young people can be like the carp leaping over the Dragon Gate, and become a pillar of excellence through their own efforts. Different shapes of carp (color, number of whiskers, size ratio, etc.) symbolize different expectations for the future: to be healthy, to be strong, or even to become a dragon among men.

Expanded:

In the age of the Internet, "koi carp The "koi" craze originated from a forwarding lottery activity of Alipay - at 14:00 on September 29, 2018, Alipay sent out a microblog titled "I wish you to become a Chinese koi" through its official microblog. " microblogging. The rules of the activity are simple, as long as you forward this microblogging, you will have the opportunity to become the "Chinese koi" and have the grand prize.

Eight days later, after 3 million retweets, the grand prize was announced. A 90-year-old girl with the microblogging nickname "Xin Xiaodu" was hit by good luck, and the gift list had already been made into a banner more than 10 meters long.

Before the Internet era, the fish "koi" had actually been given a lot of meaning beyond fish in real history. It's not hard to find mythological legends about it in Chinese literature. Liu Xiang in the Western Han Dynasty recorded the legend of a carp carrying a man to heaven and becoming an immortal in his "Biography of the Immortals", using the carp as a mount for the immortals, and in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the "Sanqin Chronicle" had a story of a carp leaping over the Dragon Gate.

In the Tang Dynasty, the word "koi" began to appear in poems. In Lu Guimeng's "Reward for the Bitter Rain of Attacking Beauty" and Huang Tao's "Presenting the Same Year after Becoming Famous", the word "koi" appeared. Carp became a species to be admired. It should be noted that the word "koi" in the poem is generally considered to mean "carp with glittering scales", not the modern koi we see today.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Koi (2018 Top 10 Buzzwords)

China News Network - The whole country is turning to koi, what's the story of this fish?