Why do we put up Spring Festival couplets during the Spring Festival?
Introduction: As the Spring Festival approaches, we can often see that shops or street stalls are already filled with various Spring Festival couplets. It is a necessary custom to post Spring Festival couplets before the New Year. Why do we Chinese hang Spring Festival couplets during the Chinese New Year? How did the custom of pasting Spring Festival couplets during the Spring Festival come from? Let’s follow the editor to learn more about it below! A year's plan begins with spring, and the Spring Festival is an important traditional festival of ours. Do you want to know more about the Spring Festival? Come and take a look at the Spring Festival special topic carefully prepared by Mr. Shui Mo!What are Spring Festival Couplets?Spring Festival couplets are commonly known as "door couplets", "spring stickers", "couplets", "couplets", and are elegantly called "couplets". The festive bright red Spring Festival couplets are a type of couplets that are posted during the Spring Festival, hence the name Spring Festival couplets. One of the origins of Spring Festival couplets is peach charms. Initially people used it to ward off evil spirits. Later, wooden carvings of door gods were painted and hung on peach wood beside the door. Later, it was simplified to writing the door god's name on the peach wood board. Another source of Spring Festival couplets is Spring stickers. In ancient times, people often posted the word "Yichun" on the Spring Festival, which gradually developed into Spring Festival couplets.The custom of pasting Spring Festival couplets during the Spring FestivalAt the beginning of the New Year, the first thing to do is to put up door gods and couplets. On New Year’s 30th (or 29th), every household goes out to buy Spring Festival couplets. Those who are interested will also spread out paper and write them with ink, decorating all the doors inside and outside the house. Spring couplets are also called door couplets, spring stickers, couplets, couplets, peach charms, etc. It depicts the background of the times and expresses good wishes with neat, parallel, concise and exquisite words. It is a unique literary form in China. The real popularization of Spring Festival couplets began in the Ming Dynasty, which was related to the promotion of Zhu Yuanzhang. According to "Zhanyunlou Miscellaneous Stories" by Chen Shanggu of the Qing Dynasty, one year when Zhu Yuanzhang was preparing for the New Year, he ordered that a pair of Spring Festival couplets be posted on every door to show congratulations. Originally Spring Festival couplets were written on peach wood boards, but later they were written on paper. The color of peach wood is red, and red represents auspiciousness and the ability to ward off evil, so Spring Festival couplets are mostly written on red paper. However, temples use yellow paper, and during the mourning period (before the full mourning period), white, green and yellow are used. White paper is used in the first year, green paper in the second year, yellow paper in the third year, and red paper is used again only after the mourning period is over in the fourth year. Because the Manchus preferred the color white, the Qing Palace used white paper to post Spring Festival couplets, with a blue border on the outside and a red stripe on the inside.The story behind pasting Spring Festival coupletsIt is said that Meng Chang, the king of the Later Shu Kingdom during the Five Dynasties, was a king who liked to be different. On New Year's Eve in 964 AD, he had a sudden idea and asked a scholar under him named Xin Yinxun to write two sentences on a peach wood board and hang it on the door frame of his room as a peach charm. The two sentences are "The New Year brings more blessings, and the festival is called Changchun". The general meaning of the first sentence is: The New Year enjoys the blessings left by previous generations. The general meaning of the second sentence is: The festive season indicates that spring will always be here. From then on, the form and content of peach charms changed. This was not only reflected in the use of parallel couplets to replace "Shentu" and "Yulei", but also in the expansion of the connotation of peach charms. It was not only used to ward off evil spirits and disasters, but also added content of praying for blessings and wishes. This became the earliest pair of Spring Festival couplets in our country. By the Song Dynasty, writing couplets on peach wood boards had become quite common. Wang Anshi's poem "New Year's Day" wrote "The year is gone with the sound of firecrackers, and the spring breeze brings warmth to Tusu. Thousands of doors and windows are bright, and people always replace the old peach charms with new ones" which reflects the grand occasion of hanging peach charms in every household on New Year's Eve. At the same time, with the emergence of door gods and the use of red paper, which symbolizes happiness and auspiciousness, to write peach charms, the mission of warding off evil spirits and avoiding disasters was gradually transferred to the door gods, and the content of the peach charms evolved into expressing people's good wishes for good fortune and a good harvest in the coming year. The term "Spring Festival couplets" appeared in the early Ming Dynasty. After Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, became emperor, he liked pomp and circumstance, and he also liked the peach charms that wealthy families posted on New Year's Eve, so he wanted to promote it. Before the New Year's Eve of one year, he issued an imperial decree requiring every household in Jinling to paste spring couplets written on red paper on the door frames to welcome the New Year. On the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year, Zhu Yuanzhang went on a secret inspection, checking the Spring Festival couplets from house to house. Whenever he sees well-written Spring Festival couplets, he becomes very happy and praises them endlessly. During his inspection, Zhu Yuanzhang saw a family without Spring Festival couplets. He was very angry and asked the reason. The attendant replied: This is a master who makes a living by slaughtering and castrating pigs. He was very busy during the New Year and had not had time to ask someone to write couplets. Zhu Yuanzhang ordered someone to bring writing brush, ink, paper and inkstone, and wrote a couplet for this family: "Split the road of life and death with both hands, and cut off the root of right and wrong with one knife." After writing it, he continued his inspection. After a while, when Zhu Yuanzhang was returning to the palace after his inspection, he passed by here again and saw that the butcher's house had not yet posted the Spring Festival couplets he wrote, so he asked what was going on? The owner of the house replied respectfully: "This couplet was written by the emperor himself. We hang it high in the hall and burn incense to worship it every day." Zhu Yuanzhang was very happy to hear this, so he ordered his attendants to reward the family with thirty taels of silver. From this we can see that the name and promotion of "Spring Festival couplets" were the result of Zhu Yuanzhang's administrative order and the issuance of an imperial decree, which allowed them to be promoted in every household.Summary: The above article content is the analysis and introduction of the origin of the custom of pasting Spring Festival couplets during the Spring Festival compiled by the editor for readers. I hope you can understand and feel the traditional Chinese culture, customs and connotations! |
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