春联 - Spring Festival Couplets

[trisha2766]

I read about 春联 (Spring Festival Couplets) in my NPCR4 book. They didn't give any examples though. Does any one have one to share? Or know of a site that has some?

[Hofmann]

Thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread.

[chrix]

Wikipedia can be a useful starting-point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunlian (though it looks like it could use some expansion)

Edited February 10, 2010 at 01:48 AM by chrix

[imron]

Thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread, thread.

While it's great that your Chinese is good enough to be reading Chinese-language forums on the topic, please bear in mind that not all Chinese learners have the ability to do so. I'm not sure what level NPCR4 gets you to, but I have a suspicion that if the OP had sufficient Chinese to be reading native level forums, she might not have posted here.

[Hofmann]

Roger, but I think all of those threads have images of 春聯 or text examples of 春聯. Not much reading to do.

[LongwenChinese]

I am attaching a picture of a set of 春联(two vertical ones)，横批(the horizontal one)，and a “倒”福(on the door) that I wrote for my Chinese Language Program.

[trisha2766]

Thanks everyone! The pictures were nice, but were a little difficult for me to read - between the calligraphy, some traditional characters and the limited number of characters I know.

One of the sites I found through the Wikipedia page had the following one that I liked a lot:

Top: 大地回春 (Whole Earth Returns Spring) (dà dì huí chūn)

Left: 冬去山明水秀 (winter gone mountain clear water sparkles)(dōng qù shān míng shuǐ xiù)

Right: 春来鸟唱花香 (Spring comes bird sings flower fragrant )(chūn lái niǎo chàng huā xiāng)

The original I think had traditional characters, but I changed them. I think I did it right.

I went to a Chinese grocery today and found one to buy, it says:

天增歲月人增壽

day increase years people increase longevity (tiān zēng suì yuè rén zēng shòu)

春滿乾坤福滿門

spring full the universe good fortune full door (chūn mǎn qián kūn fú mǎn mén)

I was able to translate it literally, with the help of nciku.com, but I wasn't sure of the full meaning. Can anyone help with that? And which should be on the left and which on the right side of the door?

[Hofmann]

天增歲月人增壽 is on the right.

春滿乾坤福滿門 is on the left.

(Extra credit for whoever can tell why.)

I would say 天 refers to the sky or "heaven." Except in Mandarin, 天 doesn't mean "day."

滿 verb "fill."

I think 門 here means "family."

[trisha2766]

Is it something about the tones of the characters that determines which is on the left and right? Wikipedia didn't explain that too clearly.

Does 天增 mean anything regarding the length of daylight increasing in the spring?

I never would have thought about 門 meaning family.

[imron]

The normal reading order is right, left, top. It has nothing to do with the characters or the tones, however there are other rules regarding the tones, the specifics of which is probably the extra credit part to Hofmann's question.

[trisha2766]

So when you read the top, do you read the characters from left to right? More specifically, for the one shown here: http://www.chinapage.com/duilian/chunlian0.html (大地回春)

would it be read as dà dì huí chūn or chūn huí dà dì or chūn huí dì dà?

And for that one, if you were to read the whole thing would be read like this:

chūn lái niǎo chàng huā xiāng

dōng qù shān míng shuǐ xiù

dà dì huí chūn

[Hofmann]

It appears that they have the left and right ones switched. The top one should be read in whatever direction makes sense. This should be right to left most of the time.

Answer to extra credit: The four tones 平, 上, 去, and 入 are tone categories of Middle Chinese which are distributed differently in different Chinese languages. These are further placed into categories of level (平) and oblique (仄). 平 tones are categorized as level, while 上, 去, and 入 tones are categorized as oblique. In 對聯, the last syllable of the first (right side) line should be oblique, which forces the last syllable of the second (left side) line to be level.