Taiwan Today

During the Chinese New Year, auspicious sayings—"Spring Couplets" written in gold or black ink on red paper—are affixed to the beam above the main door of each house and on both door posts. They express the family's hopes for the New Year—good health, prosperity, luck, and long life.

The custom of pasting Spring Couplets can be traced back to at least 600 years ago. According to the volume Selected Poems of the Various Dynasties, after Ming Tai Tsu, founder of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.), conquered Chinling (now known as Nanking), he personally wrote, on New Year's Eve:

The conqueror sent the couplet to his aide, Tao An. From then on, this literary form has become very much a part of the traditional celebration for the New Year.

Nien hua, woodblock prints depicting popular life, the gods, folklore, and hopes for the future...and very often calligraphic lessons in loyalty, honesty, and filial piety...are also pasted upon the doors or walls of homes as New Year decorations.

Historical records reveal that as early as the First and Second Centuries A.D., the Chinese had perfected the art of woodblock printing. However, the oldest known print still in existence is a Ninth Century black and white illustration of Sakyamuni Buddha lecturing to his disciples.

By the 11th Century, people had begun to use such prints as New Year decorations. But it was to take 400 more years to develop the art to its present breadth—embracing poster-like prints in full color, usually on one of the following four subjects areas:

—traditional life in rural communities during the New Year holidays, such as a depiction of the women of the family gathered around the kitchen table, making dumplings for the year-end feast…or of children, dressed in their new clothes and kowtowing to their grandparents.

—Chinese folklore, history, opera, or novels.

—the gods, a likeness of the God of the Hearth, or the God of Wealth, or of all the gods.

—auspicious calligraphic wishes for the forthcoming year.

Over the years, both couplets and nien hua have not only lit up Chinese homes with their brilliant colors, but also provided entertainment for visitors.

During the ages past, good hands in calligraphy among family and friends were burdened with the duty of writing such couplets, free of charge, as a kind of honor. Poor scholars would set up booths in the market, selling their couplets to improve the prospects of a meager holiday budget.

Records show that some of the best such nien hua originated in a small village in northern China, just outside Tientsin, called Yang Liu Ching. They were manufactured year round by the entire village, and sold throughout China by buyers who would come to the village each year to replenish their New Year's supply. Yang Liu Ching was not unique, however. The entire village of Tao Hua Wu, near Suchow in southern China, and countless villages in Shantung, Kuangtung, and Szechwan Provinces were also involved in one or another aspect of this cottage industry.

According to a study by Professor Lou Tsu-kuang, editor and publisher of Asian Folklore and Social Monographs, of 240 families in the Shantung village of Hsi Yang Chia Pu, 108 were involved in the manufacture and sale of nien hua. The remaining 132 families were employed by the principals as master craftsmen, artisans, and laborers.

In the last years before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, each family in the village consumed an average 600 reams of paper a year (there are 500 sheets in a ream). Daily production by a skilled craftsman was 500 prints—200 to 300 prints if some small portion of the print had to be hand painted, or 30 to 50 prints when significant added line drawing was required.

From the third lunar month onward each year, buyers would arrive to order or take delivery of their next season's supply of prints. Many subjects and designs were offered, available for inspection in the form of woodcuts that had been in each family for generations. Many of these, especially at Yang Liu Ching, were extremely valuable, carefully guarded by the families who owned them. When a new design was required, the master craftsmen first had to make a cutting for the major part of the print, and then the set of blocks for the different colors. The printing operation was organized like an assembly line, with one person pressing the black portion, another the red, a third blue,—and perhaps still another hand-painting faces.

As Chinese society grew more turbulent, the traditional print industry began to disappear. Though the frequently-quoted subject matter of both couplets and nien hua remain the same today as hundreds of years ago, supply and manufacture have taken on an entirely new look, the objects of large-scale commercial exploitation and mass production. Ample profits have attracted numerous stationery stores and the ubiquitous street vendors to retail distribution of many newly-competitive lines.

Today, people are particularly concerned about "design." Traditional two-lined rendering of couplets and one-dimensional nien hua do not satisfy the impulse for contemporary ambience, nor fit the present-day interior decor of modern apartments. With the radical improvement in mass printing techniques, a flood of variations in both free-hanging and paste-up styles have brought about an ornamental revolution in this realm.

Variations in Spring Couplet presentations include square or rhombic backgrounds. Plastic shapes now feature a single auspicious character, perhaps painted cornerwise, usually "spring" (chun) or "luck" (fu). These are pasted on walls and doors, often upside-down due to a Chinese affection for wordplay—because "upside-down" is the same word in Chinese as "arrive" (tao). The single character thus implies a realm of hope: "May spring and its joys arrive. May blessings come."

Other variations are attained by the blending of paper cutting arts and calligraphy. For example, the auspicious saying "May every year be an affluent one" (nien nien you yu) features three Chinese characters and a prettily-shaped fish cutout—the spoken word for fish having the same sound as the last character, yu.

Strictly speaking, such artistic cutouts are not really qualified to be called "couplets." However, the originality and vividness of their designs and colors enrich the New Year mood as well as the holiday decor.

Hsu Bin-sen, a businessman specializing in machines, was among the very first to take notice of initial developments in New Year lines. He is enthusiastic about describing present-day manufacturing processes:

"First," noted Hsu, "we have to choose the pattern. Most of our designs stem from traditional Chinese paper cutting forms, but we place particular emphasis on cleanness of outline. Too delicate and complicated a design will be unsuitable; our needs are distinctly separate from traditional paper cutting, which relishes delicacy and detail.

"As soon as a pattern is decided," he went on, "a dexterous hand is required to make the knife-press. Pasted flat on a piece of planking, the pattern is first sawed out. Then special kinds of razor blades are inlaid along the sawed-out lines, section by section, closely together so no crevices are left between blade conjunctions. Sponge is inserted along the blades to keep the cardboard from cracking during the pressing.

"A knife-press costs about NT$8,000-10,000 (US$200-250) if Japanese blades are employed. Usually, such a press can cut more than 5,000 blanks before it is worn out, provided there is smooth machine operation by an experienced worker. The more cutouts it presses, the lower the costs. Amounts are decided by estimates of market demand."

Hsu discussed present-day printing stocks:

"The popular red cardboard is actually made from colorless paper of two different thicknesses. These are printed in red and then mounted. Three printing operations and one coating operation are necessary if the red color is to achieve a resplendent brilliance and an even density. After mounting, the resultant cardboards must be dried in erect positions, instead of in flat piles, to keep from being glued to each other.

"When the stock and presser are ready, we begin. Though the machine can press only one cardboard each time, the production speed is still amazing. The biggest problem comes in the requirement for tedious manual labor to remove the cutout pieces from the finished design. Usually, the retail outlets prefer to do such work when a 50 percent discount is provided by the manufacturer," he concluded.