A Long-Surviving & Thriving Form of Art

As the Year of the Rat starts this Saturday, you may soon see nice calligraphy on red paper strips at community events, even if you are not ethnically Chinese. Did you know such red paper strips always come in pairs and are called spring couplets? Have you wondered why they appear around Lunar New Year's Day in Cupertino every year?

It probably won't surprise you when you hear the Chinese write spring couplets to express their best wishes for the new year. What may seem puzzling though, is the word "spring" in the name of the couplets, because Lunar New Year is in winter by modern definition.

The namesake of spring couplets came from a different definition of spring. In fact, it was not until 1780 when the Societas Meteorologica Palatina, an early international organization for meteorology, defined seasons as groupings of three whole months and made spring start on March 1 in the Northern Hemisphere. Prior to that, Europeans generally saw early spring in February, just as the Chinese did. Today's Celtic Calendar still marks Feb 1 as the beginning of spring.

Likewise, a Chinese almanac invented thousands of years ago to define seasons is still in use today. According to the Chinese almanac, spring starts when the sun reaches the celestial longtitude of 315 degrees, and that's around Feb 4, very close to Lunar New Year, which begins with the new moon between Jan 21 and Feb 20. That's why Lunar New Year is also known as the Spring Festival, for which spring couplets are written.

With the namesake of spring couplets explained, the next question about them should be their origin. Chinese scholars generally believe spring couplets evolved from the ancient custom of hanging peach wood strips at building entrances to keep evil spirits away. It is unknown why ancient Chinese believed peach wood could fend off evil spirits, but they did.

Spring couplets written on peach wood signs emerged no later than the early 8th century. At first, there were different couplets for Lunar New Year's Day and the Chinese-defined first day of spring. However, since these two days are really close to each other and occasionally coincide, spring couplets now are just intended for Lunar New Year.

However, Koreans only adopted couplets for the Chinese-defined beginning of spring from ancient China, so nowadays Koreans always post spring couplets on or around Feb 4, without considering when the Lunar New Year's Day is.

It often surprises Chinese people when they see Korean spring couplets on white paper. Most of today's Chinese people assume spring couplets should be written on red paper. They are unaware that red paper was not used for spring couplets until the late 14th century. Although paper had been in use for writing in China since AD 105, Chinese people continued to write spring couplets on peach wood signs for centuries just for the good luck they believed peach wood could bring.

It was the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398), who initiated writing spring couplets on red paper. The emperor's preference for red paper came from the color symbol of the Ming Dynasty. In Chinese history, every dynasty was supposed to have a color symbol, and it had to be one of the following five colors: white, black, green, red, and yellow, each representing one of the world's five basic elements: metal, water, wood, fire, and soil, respectively.

Whether on peach wood or red paper, a spring couplet consists of two lines in parallel structure. That means the two lines have equal grammatical units. If the first word of the first line is a noun, the first word of the second line must be a noun, too. The parallel structure is meant to symbolize the balance between yin (what drives everything cold, dark, wet, passive and female of the universe) and yang (what propels everything warm, bright, dry, active, and male of the universe).

Most notably, every Chinese word is one-syllable and square-shaped, so two lines with the same number of words in parallel structure naturally come out even. Such symmetry has enabled Chinese couplets to go beyond a literary genre and work as a visual art form while couplets in other languages purely belong to literature.

Spring couplets constitute a subcategory of Chinese couplets. There are other types of Chinese couplets for purposes other than Lunar New Year's celebrations, but the centuries-old custom of writing spring couplets for every Lunar New Year has helped preserve Chinese couplets as an art form, which has been more and more widely recognized worldwide.

Last February, then-British Prime Minister Theresa May had the two vertical lines of a spring couplet posted alongside her front door for the Lunar New Year. The couplet can be translated into English as follows:

Scarlet phoenix birds present good luck and flying dragons bring auspiciousness;

Fuchsia peach blossoms celebrate new year and apricot blossoms welcome spring.

Isn't it sweet? Does it make you feel like following Ms. May's example? A spring couplet should be easy to get in Cupertino.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Note: Crystal Tai is the author of Chinese Couplets: A Long-Surviving and Thriving Form of Art, which is the first ever book that introduces Chinese couplets in English, available at https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Couplets-Long-Surviving-Thriving-Form-ebook/dp/B0834P9FSH/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=chinese+couplets&qid=1579810052&s=books&sr=1-2