2014 春联 (chun lian)

[ouyangjun]

With Chinese New Year quickly approaching the 春联 (chunlian) are being posted on doors of different areas. I was at my favorite restaurant (五观堂) tonight and they were handing out 对联to the customers.  I decided to post it here for others.  It's a simple 对联 with only 4 characters total.

 

[Meng Lelan]

Dang, if I could just be there right now collecting free 对联 for MY doors here. Thanks for posting the picture. 

[skylee]

That is not a 對聯.

[Meng Lelan]

That's right, they aren't, generally they are two strips of paper each strip having four characters, and the two verses go together as a set to wish everyone happiness fortune health etc. 

[陳德聰]

Those go on the actual door itself rather than around the door frame.

[ouyangjun]

Interesting and thanks for clarifying.  Can you help me understand why the attached would not be 对联?  From my original understanding 对联 do not need to be a set length of characters (can have 一字联，二字联，三字联，等等).  Also, I don't think that being hung on the door frame is a requirement for 对联.  My original understanding is that it is a type of poetry in Chinese, and each character needs to relate to the 对 character and the overall meaning of the 对联 needs to be similar.  

 

In the attached:

感 （对） 有 - both are verbs 

恩 （对） 福 - kindness and blessing

Overall similar meaning

 

I've never studied this aspect of the culture so I don't have the background o know why it would or wouldn't be considered a 对联, but I'm hoping someone can give me clarity for further understanding.  

 

Thanks!

 

Also, below is a very detailed explanation of 对联 on baidu.  I have not looked at this yet, a bit too much detail and I'm too busy today to get into it....  For those that have the motivation:

http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=ZhcZJepYzqoKFkJK57bg4K9pTYdqn97LmwJ2f8Q83Ja1x_SgqBL41bKls_H4O2JUnbFc49ntTq2Zmt1PQF4-0FWrJG9OKzfh5l9cfXHQfnZU8shzJh2iFs0TucvN0uiH#4_9

[陳德聰]

Would you call two words a couplet?

[ouyangjun]

@陳德聰 - In 对联 I believe the couplet portion refers to the the two sides, so the couplet can be one character on each side or the entire group of characters.  From my understanding 对联 can have anywhere from 1 character to 100's of characters.  The below is an example of a one character duilian (一字联) according to Baidu Baike.    

 

墨（对）泉

这是最经典的一字联。

‘墨’字上部为‘黑’字；而‘泉’字上半部分为‘白’字。各属于颜色的一种，且词义相反。

两个字的下半部分别为‘土’和‘水’又都属于五行之一。

此联还有另一种对法：

墨（对）柏

同“黑”、"白"相对，且“土”、“木”都为五行。

 

I'm actually way out of my element here trying to talk about 对联, I was hoping someone would either explain what it takes to be a 对联 or someone read the Baidu link above and give the cliff notes 

 

 

[skylee]

感 （对） 有 - both are verbs

恩 （对） 福 - kindness and blessing

Simple rules are nice.

[陳德聰]

The thing about 对联 is that they have a bazillion different rules, it's a super difficult poetic art form where the number of strokes, the meaning of components of the characters, the actual meaning of the characters, and a lot of time the pronunciation of the characters have to be 对. What you're saying is the 联 part, where the content of the characters just has to be related. It's way, way, way more than that.

It's hard to say why your example isn't a 对联, it just... isn't. It doesn't meet the majority of the criteria for being 对联.

 

Kind of like the following poem I just composed, which I can call a poem but most reasonable people would look at and say "that's not really a poem":

fortunate,
grateful.

[Hofmann]

 

 

The thing about 对联 is that they have a bazillion different rules, it's a super difficult poetic art form where the number of strokes, the meaning of components of the characters, the actual meaning of the characters, and a lot of time the pronunciation of the characters have to be 对. What you're saying is the 联 part, where the content of the characters just has to be related. It's way, way, way more than that.

............The extent to which you exaggerate the complexity of it suggests you've been severely misinformed. There are not a "bazillion" rules and it's not "super difficult". The number of strokes and meaning of the components are not considered. Here are the rules:

• Both sides must have the same number of characters.
• Corresponding characters must be the same part of speech.
• Corresponding characters must have the inverse tone of each other (i.e. 平 to 仄, 仄 to 平; read about tone patterns if you don't know these terms.) The first, third, fifth, seventh, etc. characters can be fudged a bit.
• The second line must end in a 平 tone.

 

OP, that might barely be considered a very unusual 對聯, and if it is, it's displayed backwards. 恩 is a level (平) tone and 福 is an oblique (仄) tone, specifically entering (入). As you probably know they are usually at least 8 characters long (4 on each side). Whether it is a couplet or not, it's definitely weird and so is anything shorter than 6 characters.

[陳德聰]

墨泉...

[brtbrt]

that was not a 春联, just two phases for the good wishes and don't even ryhme. but you treat it as 春联, it is 春联. the phases for the good wishes.

as such 一字联 墨泉....

it just some old chinese famous people got bored....