Saying It With Poetry

A home cannot be considered sufficiently decorated for Chinese New Year without the familiar sight of red paper scrolls with couplets painted on them. These scrolls, which are known as duilian or chunlian (for spring couplets as Chinese New Year is also seen as a celebration of the start of Spring), usually contain messages expressing the household’s spiritual aspirations or wishes for good fortune and good cheer in the coming year.

To create a duilian scroll is not as easy as it might seem. On a technical scale, calligraphy requires a steady hand so that the strokes will not look out of place, yet at the same time, one must have flexibility to move the brush around smoothly.

And if that wasn’t tricky enough, the couplets have to be divided into two, which are then affixed on the right and left side of the doors in the house. The scroll on the right will form the first part of the couplet, and the one on the left will complete it. Not only should there be the same number of characters for each scroll, but their meaning and rhythm have to match as well.