Chinese New Year is an important Chinese festival celebrated at the turn
of the Chinese calendar. In China, it is also called the “Spring Festival”.
On Chinese New Year, people will celebrate it in many ways:lion dance ,
firecrackers, family meal, visiting friends and relatives, giving red
packets (which is called “hongbao”), paste the antithetical couplet
(which is called “duilian”).
Lion dance is a traditional dance in Chinese culture.performers
dressed as a lion and limited the action of lion under the drum music.
In Chinese traditional lion dance can drive out evil spirits.
Firecrackers in Chinese traditional culture is also drive out evil
spirits.And the source of firecrackers have a story: Once upon a time,
every year the lunar New Year’s eve night will appear a monster called “nian”
in order to drive out it, people burn the firecrackers outside the house.
Red packets is the elder will give it to the children, hope they can be health
and happy in the new year.
Paste the antithetical couplet is a poetry. They are usually seen on the sides
of doors leading to people’s homes or as hanging scrolls in an interior. It’s to
expresses their happy and hopeful thoughts for the coming year.
Cathy's Blog
Just another Edublogs site
I enjoy reading posts that give background to cultural traditions. I knew a little bit about the red envelopes, or packets, but I thought it was just to give money. I didn’t know about the poetry, though, and always wondered what was on the scrolls. What sort of things do people write? Do they write them themselves, or copy from ancient poems?
Thanks for sharing these insights into your culture, Cathy.
Mrs T.
In fact, not just in spring festival people will paste the antithetical couplet ,when they have marriage,birthday(for an elderly person), funeral or move to a new place ,they may also paste antithetical couplet ,just to express their feeling like:their hope to the new life or their remembrance to the dead. But now people only like to paste the antithetical couplet on New Year’s day, and they won’t write it by themselves they buy it form the supermarket.In the past people always write it by themselves.The antithetical couplet is very complex , it has many rules. Like:the number of the word they use should be the same(you can not use the same word).And the structure should also be the same. The word should be correspond, for example:If you have ‘green’ on this side you have to write ‘red’ on the other side. And the last word of the antithetical couplet also have some rule .But I can not explain it very clear,it’s relative to Chinese spell(pinyin). In the past, people also make the antithetical couplet as an entertainment.
Thank you for that further explanation, Cathy. Very informative. 🙂