China Travel News

During the Spring Festival, all the doors are pasted with Spring Festival couplets, highlighting Chinese calligraphy with black characters on red paper.

The Spring Couplet is composed of two antithetical sentences on both sides of the door and a horizontal scroll bearing an inscription, usually an auspicious phrase, above the gate. The sentence pasting on the right side of the door is called the first line of the couplet and the one on the left the second line. On the eve of the Spring Festival, every household will paste on doors a spring couplet written on red paper to give a happy and prosperous atmosphere of the Festival.

At the beginning, the Spring Festival couplets were called "taofu"(peachwood charms against evil) which were hung on the gate on the lunar New Year´s Eve to ward off evils and ghosts. Later the peachwood charms were replaced by red paper, on which auspicious words written.

There is a legend about it. During the reign of Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398) of the Ming Dynasty, "taofu" was formally replaced by Spring Festival couplets, and Emperor Taizu of the Ming wrote Spring Festival couplets in person. Since then, the custom of sticking on couplets on doors before the lunar New Year has been handed down generation by generation.