| Chinese Chun Lian |
 |
Chun lian is a special type of distich, or couplet. It is used only
during the Chinese New Year as part of its celebration. It is composed
of two poetic lines matching both sound and sense.
Every year when the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) is coming,
households in the country and town put spring festival distiches
onto the door or wall facing the door in the sitting room. This
is done to express the people's wish for a peaceful and happy
new year.
The custom originated from ancient times when people were ignorant
of the law of the nature. They couldn't explain such events as
droughts, floods, earthquakes and accidents in a scientific way.
They believed that it was the devils that brought them misfortunes.
They also believed the devils could be avoided or driven away
in a magic way. So at the beginning of each year, each family
would hang two peach boards on both sides of the entrance into
the house. The figures of gods carved on the boards were said
to be powerful to prevent the devils from entering the house.
There is also a story about why peach boards were used. According
to a legend, in the East Sea there used to be a beautiful mountain
named Dushuo. On it there was a 3000-year-old peach tree. The
tree was so tall that a branch bent with its top touching the
ground. The bending branch formed an entrance. Devils had to go
through this entrance to go out of the mountain. The Celestial
Ruler knew that they would go out and do wrong to people. To stop
the devils, he ordered two of his generals to guard at the entrance.
They were empowered to arrest any devil going out.
Villagers around learned this. They copied this practice and
placed two peach boards on either side of the door. At first they
carved images of gods on the boards. Later they simplified the
work by drawing the images. Still later, they simply wrote some
words on two sheets of paper. The words were mostly incantations,
which were thought to be magically effective to stop devils.
By Five Dynasties (907-960), someone in the royal court began
to write distiches on paper instead of carving or drawing pictures
or writing incantations. The lines are vertically arranged with
the same length. As distiches usually express people's wish for
prosperous life and appear in a very beautiful artistic form,
hanging distiches in the Spring Festival soon became a popular
practice throughout China. |
