Do Spring Festival couplets have to be related to the Spring Festival?

"Every Spring Festival, no matter in the city or in the countryside, every family has to pick the beautiful red Spring Festival couplets and paste them on the door, to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new, and to increase the festive atmosphere.

Chinese New Year couplets, also known as "spring stickers", "door-to-door", "couplets", it is a neat and concise text to depict a beautiful image, expressing good wishes, is a unique form of literature in China. It is a unique form of literature in China. There is no limit to the number of words in a couplet, but they must be equal. Both sides of the couplet must correspond to each other. Spring Festival couplets, formerly known as peach symbols, are an important symbol of the Chinese New Year. When people put up spring couplets and blessings in front of their houses, it means that the Spring Festival has officially kicked off.

Posting spring couplets and changing door gods is an important custom of the Spring Festival in China's folklore. In the past, when it came to the New Year, temporary stalls selling spring scrolls were seen on the streets. Qing people Shen Tai like in the "spring Ming Cai Feng Zhi" describes the situation in Beijing before the New Year to sell spring couplets, said: "The school teacher, more than the sale of couplets.

Pre-posted newspaper 'book spring ink Zhuang', 'borrowing paper to learn books', 'dyeing the year' and so on, in front of the store, high tables, red felt, charcoal pots and ink lamps, the longitudinal pen big book door couplets across the cloak. " This can be seen in the old days to paste the Spring Festival couplets of the spectacle.

Spring couplets also known as "door to", "spring post", is a kind of couplets, because in the Spring Festival when posted, so the name, spring more written on red paper, when the New Year's Eve is approaching, thousands of doors, everywhere is a bright red spring stickers, can really show a faction of the Spring color.

1. The origin of the Spring Festival

How did the Spring Festival come about? There is a story in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Legend has it that in the East China Sea there was a beautiful mountain called Dushuo Mountain, also known as Taodu Mountain. On the mountain there was a large peach tree that curved over 3,000 miles, and at the top of the tree there was a golden rooster that crowned the dawn at sunrise. At the northeast end of this peach tree, there is a probable arching branch, and the top of the tree bends all the way down, next to the ground, like a natural gate.

Shuo Mountain is inhabited by all kinds of demons and ghosts, to go out you have to go through this ghost door. Fearing that the ghosts and monsters would come down the mountain to haunt the earth, the Emperor of Heaven sent two gods to guard the gate, one called Shentian and the other called Yubi. The names of these two gods have a special way of pronouncing their names: Shentian should be pronounced "伸舒", and Yubi should be pronounced "郁律".

The two gods specialized in monitoring the behavior of ghosts and monsters. If they found any ghosts and demons doing wrong, they would be tied up with grass ropes and fed to tigers. After that, the saying of ghosts and monsters of peach wood was derived from this story. So, in those days, people used two pieces of peach wood to carve the statue of Shentan and Yubi or write their names on every New Year's Eve, and hung them on both sides of the door, which was called the Peach Symbol to drive away disasters and suppress evils.

After the Tang Dynasty, it was gradually changed to Yuchi Gong and Qin Shubao. Legend has it that Emperor Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty staged the Xuanwumen Coup, killing his brothers and forcing his father, Li Yuan of the Tang Dynasty, to abdicate as Emperor Taishang and ascend to the throne himself. Since then, because Wei Zheng dreamed of beheading the old dragon in Jinghe River, every night he seemed to hear ghosts outside his bedchamber throwing bricks and tiles into the house and making strange cries.

Tang Taizong had no choice but to tell his ministers about the incident. Tang founding general Qin Shubao volunteered to go to the palace door vigil to drive away the ghosts, another founding general Yuchi Gong is also willing to accompany the vigil. That night, the two men, fully clad in armor and armed, stood guard at the entrance to the bedchamber for the night.

Tang Taizong really slept well, a few days later, Tang Taizong's body gradually recovered, and could not bear to let the two generals continue to watch the night, so he ordered people to draw down the image of the two generals' might, and put the portrait on the door. The story spread, and Yuchigong and Qin Shubao were gradually worshipped as door gods.

2. The earliest spring couplets in China

The evolution of spring couplets from peach charms is said to have taken place during the Five Dynasties, when Meng Chang, the lord of the Later Shu State in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, on New Year's Eve in 964 AD. He did not like the work of Xin Yinsun, who wrote two auspicious phrases on the Peach Symbol plate, and wrote the following with his own pen:

New Year's Day, the remaining celebrations, the Jiajie number of the Spring Festival

This is the earliest Spring Festival couplets in our country, and since then, scholars and scholars have regarded Spring Festival couplets as an elegant thing, and the trend of Spring Festival couplets has gradually spread. By the Song Dynasty, the Spring Festival couplets have become a custom of the scholarly community. Wang Anshi "yuan day" poem "thousands of households pupil day, always put the new peach for the old symbols", can illustrate this point, in the Song notes, also recorded the literati like to write spring couplets of the wind.

For example, Zhang Bangji "Mo Zhuang Man Records" described Su Dongpo in Huangzhou, in the near New Year's Eve, visit Wang Wenfu, see his party to rule the peach symbols, and then play the book on a couplet in the cloud: "Door to allow a thousand riders into the hall deep do not feel a hundred men happy. "In the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, the famous painter and calligrapher Zhao Songxue once over the Yangzhou Yingyue Building, the master begged Zhao Songxue for its spring couplets, Zhao Songxue inscription said: "Spring wind Langyuan three thousand guests, the first floor of Yangzhou bright moon."

The content of the spring couplet with the restaurant non-fat, the master was delighted, to the purple gold pot to pay. Like Zhao Songxue wrote this spring couplet has been treated as a gift of socializing.

It is said that the spring couplets really popularized in the folk, with red paper book, and become one of the annual customs, is after the Ming Dynasty. In Chen Yunzhan's "hairpin cloud building miscellany" on the record of the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang capital of Jinling, one year before New Year's Eve day, hastily whim, ordered the Secretary of State and the general public, the door must be posted on the spring couplets, indicating a new atmosphere.

The next day, he went out on a tour of the folk to see the spring couplets of the families, for entertainment. After a while, he suddenly realized that there was a house without spring scrolls, so he left his servant to find out what happened. It turned out that the master of the house is castrated pigs, neither literate, nor can write, before the busy, has not yet asked someone to write. After hearing this, Mr. Tazu called for the four treasures of the literary room, and said, "Hands split the road of life and death, and cut off the root of right and wrong with a knife."

The tone of the letter was extraordinary. The servant held the couplet and gave it to the family of the castrated pig. Later, the owner of the castrated pig was informed that the couplet was made by the Emperor himself, it was framed and hung in the center hall, considered a family treasure, and burned incense and worship every day. It is said that the official naming of the two words of the Spring Festival couplets began with Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty.

From then on, the Spring Festival couplets are widely popular in rural towns and villages, and have been prevalent in the hollow. The most commonly used Spring Festival couplets in the general family are "a firecracker in addition to the old year, the peach notes ten thousand households to welcome the new year", "days and months to increase the life of people, spring full of Qiankun Fukumon", "the door to welcome the spring, summer, autumn and winter blessings, households to the east and west, south and north of the wealth! "and so on, every household before the sticker spring couplets, the Spring Festival embellished with spring, joyful.