Speaking of the customs of the New Year
I have to mention the "Spring Festival couplets"
Every Spring Festival
Every household will always post a pair of Spring Festival couplets at the door
In anticipation of the arrival of the new year
What are Spring Festival couplets
Spring Festival couplets, also called waving chun in Cantonese, are an important type of couplets and are posted during the Chinese New Year.
Couplets, commonly known as couplets, are an applied literary style in which the Chinese language and ethnic groups are expressed in two groups of opposite forms and related sentences, and it is also a classical Chinese literary style that flourishes after poems, lyrics and songs.
Shanglian: Jixing Gao Zhao's family is rich
Downlink: The earth rejuvenates and people are healthy
In general, it has the following characteristics:
☑ The number of words in the upper and lower couplets is equal, the semantic pauses are evenly opposed, and the battle is neat
☑ The whole couplet is fully expressed
☑ The upper and lower links are related to each other
☑ Application.
☑ Aesthetic
The origin of the Spring Festival couplets
There are multiple sources for the production of Spring Festival couplets
Among them, the theory of originating from the peach charm or Yichun post is more extensive
Derived from the peach charm. The ancients believed that peach wood had the effect of warding off evil spirits and driving away ghosts, so there was often a custom of standing peach people and peach boards in the New Year. The term "peach fu" appeared in the Wei and Jin dynasties, and later unified the theory of peach people and peach boards, and continued. The peach charm is usually inscribed with auspicious phrases such as "Shen Tu", "Yu Lei" or "Jiang Taigong is here, there is no taboo", "There is an order here, all evil is far away" and so on. Peach charms are generally set up on both sides of the door, which is the source of the form of the spring couplets divided into left and right couplets.
It is generally believed that the earliest Spring Festival couplets in the mainland are the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and the lord of Later Shu Meng Chang inscribed on the peach charm board "New Year's Yuqing, Jiajie Changchun". However, the appearance of the Spring Festival couplets or couplets may be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, and the archaeological unearthed "Dunhuang Testament" has recorded some couplet formats and dual sentences, with auspicious meanings.
Originated from Yichun post. Yichun stickers, also known as "spring books", have appeared in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Liang Zongyi of the Southern Dynasty said: "On the day of the beginning of spring, the ribbon was cut for Yan to wear it, and the word 'Yichun' was pasted. Yichun sticker is an item that people pray for auspiciousness, cut into the word "Yichun" with colored paper on the day of the beginning of spring, and post it on the doorpost, and there are also some other auspicious words written as a single sentence, pasted on the lintel.
Yichun stickers have a direct impact on the birth of the Spring Festival couplets, and some Yichun stickers are pasted on the lintel, which provides the origin for the horizontal batch of Spring Festival couplets.
The social function of the couplets
As a symbol of traditional Chinese culture in the mainland, the Spring Festival couplets carry a variety of social functions, among which they mainly have the role of dispelling evil spirits and worshiping gods and praying for blessings and auspiciousness.
People write their expectations for the New Year on the Spring Festival couplets. There are those who hope that the wind and rain will be smooth, the grains will be abundant, and the six animals will be prosperous in the coming year, such as "the people are diligent and the spring is beautiful, and the land is fertile and the grains are abundant". There is hope that business will be prosperous and the financial resources will be abundant, such as "the right pair to welcome the new year, Lianlian will make a fortune". Some parents hope that their children's academic growth is inscribed on the gold list, such as "The pen has a thousand autumn industries, and the poetry is connected to the five-road city". There are also those who expect to glorify their ancestors and succeed in their careers, such as "the glorious career is prosperous every year, and the bright future is high".
Huachun Street, Chopsticks Road, Foshan
As an excellent traditional culture in the mainland, the Spring Festival couplets have never been broken off in the thousand-year-old inheritance, and have always been loved by people, and have been advancing with the times and maintaining strong vitality. Even, now, with the increase in the number of overseas Chinese, Spring Festival couplets have also been taken out of the country and become an important carrier for spreading Chinese civilization.