What is the Stuff on Chinese Entrance door？

You may have seen your Chinese friends hanging some stuff on their entrance door. But do you know what it is? It is actually called spring festival couplets. Spring Festival couplets are pasted on theentrance door with red paper, which has a festive and lively atmosphere for the Spring Festival.

 

Spring Festival couplets should be pasted, which is related to the ancient "Tao Fu" to exorcise ghosts and evade evil spirits. Ancient people had limited scientific and technological level, believing that human diseases and disasters were caused by ghosts. In order to resist their intrusion during the Spring Festival, people use peach boards with evasive effect to hang near the entrance door. At the same time, on the peach boards, they write the names of entrance door god tea and Yu Lei respectively (and also have their pictures painted). In this way, the evil ghosts who are not guilty dare not come to our entrance door. These peach boards are called "peach charms", which were replaced by red paper and written on them as Spring Festival couplets. Although people already know that there are no ghosts, the custom of pasting couplets for Spring Festival is still preserved until today. It's just that the contents of Spring Festival couplets are more and more expressive of the concept of life in the new era.

 

At the beginning of the Spring Festival, the first thing is to affix entrance door gods and couplets. On the 30th (or 29th) of the New Year's Eve, every household goes to the streets to buy Spring Festival couplets. Some Yaxing people sprinkle paper and ink on their own, decorating the entrance doors inside and outside the house.

 

Entrance door god, legend is the God that can catch ghosts. In Yingxuan's Customs of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Huangdi Shu was quoted as saying that in ancient times, there were two brothers, Shen Ta Yu Lei, who lived on Dushuo Mountain. There is a peach tree on the hill, which is covered with shade. Every morning, they inspect the ghosts under the tree. If a devil harms the world, he is tied up and fed to the tiger. Later, people used two peach boards to draw pictures of Shen Cha and Yu Lei, hanging on both sides of the entrance door to drive away ghosts and evade evil spirits. However, the entrance door god recorded in the real history books is not Shen Cha and Yu Lei, but a warrior in ancient times called Chengqing. In Bangu's biography of King Guangchuan in the Han Dynasty, it is recorded that there was a portrait of Chengqing, an ancient warrior, painted on the entrance door of King Guangchuan's palace.

 

By the Tang Dynasty, the position of entrance door god was replaced by Qin Shubao and Wei Chi Jingde. Menlian also developed from Taofu. Originally, people used peach boards to draw paintings of Shen Cha and Yu Lei, hanging on two entrance doors. Later, the portrait was changed to a "entrance door" written only. But there are two words on both sides of the entrance, which are limited in expression. People feel that they are not full of tumors. They hang two peach boards on both sides of the entrance (then use paper). They write a couple with more words and can fully reflect their wishes.

 

After Zhu Yuanzhang built the capital of Nanjing in the Ming Dynasty, he made every family affix couplets and renamed them Spring Festival couplets, all written in red paper. Legend has it that once Zhu Yuanzhang visited the people personally, only one family did not paste Spring Festival couplets.

 

Because of the vigorous advocacy of the past dynasties, Spring Festival couplets have become a special form of folk literature and art in China, which has been flourishing forever.