Spring Festival Couplets: Poetry for Your Door

Spring Festival Couplets: Poetry for Your Door

Spring Festival couplets (春联, chūnlián) are red paper scrolls with poetic couplets written in calligraphy, pasted on doorframes during Chinese New Year. They’re not decorations — they’re blessings written in verse. The right-side scroll carries the first line, the left-side scroll the second line, and a horizontal scroll across the top carries a short phrase. The characters are always written in black or gold ink on red paper, and they express wishes for prosperity, happiness, and good fortune in the coming year.

A traditional couplet follows strict rules: each line has the same number of characters, the tones follow a pattern (level tone vs. oblique tone), and the meanings of the two lines parallel each other. The horizontal scroll at the top summarizes the couplet’s theme in four characters. Popular themes: family unity, career success, wealth, health, and spring itself (the character 春 appears in many couplets).

You’ll see couplets on doors across China during New Year. Take a photo of ones you like and use a translation app — you might find that the corner shop’s couplet translates to “Business reaches the four seas, wealth comes from eight directions.”