Peach Wood Charms and Spring Festival Couplets

Chinese people usually put up Spring Festival couplets on front gates of their houses during holidays or on auspicious occasions. However, Spring Festival couplets were not so called in the first place. Instead, they used to be called peach wood charms.

It is said that long long ago, there was a mountain named Dusu in the East Sea. On the mountain there was a huge peach tree whose roots stretched outward, covering an area of 3,000 square kilometers. On the northeast top of the tree grew an arc-shaped branch bending down the ground, looking like a gate. To prevent evils and ghosts from disturbing the man's world, the Supreme Deity sent two divine generals to guard the branch and ordered every evil spirit or ghost should go through this gate-like branch whenever they wanted to go down the mountain. Due to this reason, people thought peach wood could be used to put down evil things and began to decorate their gates with two carved deity figures made of peach wood. Later on, they thought it time-consuming to carve and simply hang peach wood boards and drew the figures on them. But some people thought it still very troublesome and began to write some auspicious words or drew charms on two pieces of paper and put them on their gates. Thus Spring Festival couplets came into being.

During the Five Dynasties (907-960), people started to write antithetical couplets as their peach wood charms. It is said that once Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty made a tour in disguise, he saw a butcher's house did not put up Spring Festival couplets and then wrote one for him. Since then, putting up Spring Festival couplets became a fashion throughout the country.

Although several hundred years have passed by, the use of Spring Festival couplets are still very popular in China, not only during the Spring Festival but also on other important occasions like weddings and funerals. And Spring Festival couplets are hung not only on front gates, but also on walls and beams and in setting rooms.

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