Chun Lian - The Spring Couplets

The Chinese New Year begin the season of Spring in China. It is the end of Winter and the beginning of the new year. It is a time for hope and promise of the new year. Part of this holiday is putting up the Chun Lian. These are the poetic lines on red paper that frame the front door.

Here we have the entrance to a Tea House. In the olden days, the master of each house would compose and write the couplets. It was a chance to showoff literary skills or calligraphy skills. Passerbys could be impressed with the poetic sentiment or the brush skills of the master of the house.

But like everything else in this world, the traditional usage has been commercialized (like Christmas becoming Xmas in the US). You can buy mass produced products that show nothing about the master of the house except that they had the money to buy something.

They no longer need to follow the old format.

Bucking that trend, I produced my own Chun Lian for my dorm door.

The poetic lines read:

Every day a Guava,
The doctor doesn't come.


A Guava, in Taiwanese is called a Baale and it's kind of like an apple. I think they are very healthy, but most Taiwanese look down on them. When someone reads this couplet, they get a feeling for the master of this room: "This guy is crazy and has bad handwriting skills."