Spring Festival Couplets and Celebrities

The spring festival couplet is an age-old Chinese tradition. One theory says the first inscriber of the Spring Festival couplet was written on the eve of Spring Festival in the year of 964 AD, according to some Chinese scholars. On that day, Meng Chang, emperor of the Shu Kingdom (934-965) wrote a couplet to greet the Spring Festival and accidentally started a tradition which is very alive today.

Since then, the spring festival couplet has been a must for a great majority of households across China. Every Spring Festival sees households have a new couplet on the main door. A traditional door or gate in a Chinese household is a two-leaf structure. Two pieces of a couplet can be posted vertically on each leaf. Usually, a Spring Festival couplet has a short horizontal inscription to add an additional inscription to the couplet and it usually mounts horizontally above the door. As many doors are now a single-leaf structure, a couplet can be posted vertically on the doorframe.

The long Chinese history has produced many anecdotes about Spring Festival couplets and many well known couplets. In fact, couplets (including the Spring Festival couplet) in China have grown into a sophisticated art and literary phenomenon. In the past, government offices, palaces, temples and memorial pavilions and archways and rich people’s sitting rooms and reception rooms all displayed couplets in various forms. An anthology of Chinese couplets could be a huge collection of literary masterpieces and a delightful read. This Chinese literary genre, however, is little known outside China. Wikipedia has only a brief paragraph about this profound Chinese tradition in the entry of couplet.

Wang Xizhi (303-361), generally regarded as China’s peerless calligrapher, is said to have written a couplet on the eve of the New Year (well, this exploded the research result that the above-mentioned emperor was the creator of China’s first Spring Festival couplet since the calligrapher lived more than 600 years before the emperor). To the great calligrapher’s dismay, the couplet was stolen shortly after it had been posted. He mounted another couplet. It went missing again. It was largely because his outstanding handwriting was coveted by his admirers. So the calligrapher posted a new couplet on his door. This time, the couplet stayed on the door. It stayed because Wang deliberately left the couplet incomplete and made it look awfully inauspicious. On the Spring Festival day, he added three characters to each half of the couplet and completed his calligraphic celebration. With the added words, the meaning of the couplet was very auspicious.

Su Dongpo, a great poet of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), paid a visit to his friend Wang Wenfu on the eve of the Spring Festival one year. Seeing his friend was writing couplets. Su created one on the spot. His couplet reads to the effect that a great gateway can contain 1,000 cavaliers and a deep hall feels no noise even though 100 men are talking there. The couplet is by no means a description of a great architectural structure. It is a metaphorical axiom for noble tolerance.

Zhu Yuzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), had a special liking to couplets. He created many couplets and encouraged his ministers to write. When the Spring Festival was approaching one year, he decreed that all the dukes, ministers and scholars must have a Spring Festival couplet on the door. On the Spring Festival day, he inspected around incognito. He was very pleased with what he saw. Couplets were almost everywhere. However, the emperor found one household did not have a couplet and made an inquiry. It turned out that the butcher had failed to find a scholar to inscribe a couplet for him. The emperor wrote a couplet for the household. His antithetical inscription reads to the effect: “Open a road of life and death with two hands and sever the root of right and wrong with a knife”. It is said that Zhu Yuanzhang was the man behind the popular tradition of Spring Festival couplets across the country.

Lin Zexu, a scholar-turned minister in the Qing Dynasty known for his order to ban opium in Guangdong Province and organize military resistance against British army, wrote a very clever Spring Festival couplet when he was seven years old. On the eve of the Spring Festival one year, his father was writing a couplet for the upcoming New Year. The senior created the first half which reads to the effect:“As the moon was not bright on the night of the eve, light a few lanterns to add color to the world.” He failed to come up with an appropriate second line for the couplet. The junior beat the drum in the hall and then created the second half. His contribution reads to the effect: “As there is no thunder in the new spring, beat three rounds of drum to make a show for the universe.” The senior was very pleased with the nice finish and very proud of his son’s burgeoning talent.

Though most Spring Festival couplets express best wishes and pray for prosperity, peace and health, couplets can be very personal. Fan Wenfu, a TCM doctor in Ningbo in the Qing Dynasty is said to have posted two unique Spring Festival couplets. One was mounted on the gate of his household. It reads to the effect: I pray health for all the people and I don’t mind if I am poor alone. He posted another couplet on the door of his bedroom. It reads to the effect: I seek no dedication to longevity of 1,000 years. I seek to keep people away from hundreds of disease. Lin Shu, a man of letters who knew no foreign language but translated western literary masterpieces with the help of those who did, wrote a couplet for himself on the Spring Festival of 1924. The couplet reads to the effect: Sightseeing outdoors, the view of mountains is the only pleasure my heart finds. Walking in the world, I find it’s difficult not to make mistakes.