Spring Couplets

Spring Couplets

春聯

Spring Festival Couplets are composed of a pair of poetry lines vertically pasted on both sides of the front door and a four-character horizontal scroll affixed above the doorframe, with black or golden characters written on red paper. Pasting couplets expresses people’s delight in the festival and wishes for a better life in the coming year.

The two lines should have an equal number of characters, while their meaning must be related and antithetical. There must be a one-to-one correspondence between the two lines. The order in traditional Chinese writing is different from that in western countries or modern China.

In the past, people were accustomed to writing in vertical lines from right to left. The traditional couplets followed this rule.

Long rectangle red paper with Chinese phrases

Physical Object

springcouplets