0
Verbling LingoLab February Featured Post: Mandarin (Chinese)
5年前Thank you so much to all the teachers that submitted posts for this month's featured language, Mandarin (Chinese)--I urge you all to post your submissions as well, so that the community can benefit from everyone's knowledge and hard work!
However, our winning selection this month is by.......
🎆 ALEX LEE 🎆
You can book your very own Mandarin lesson with Alex right here: https://www.verbling.com/teachers/alexmandarin
And here you have his extremely interesting post on Lunar New Year traditions... 🧧
Chūnlián - Lunar New Year Tradition in Taiwan!
Hey there! This is Alex, Mandarin Teacher on Verbling.
Wish you all a great Lunar New Year, Xīnnián kuàilè (新年快樂)!
Today, I would like to share one interesting Lunar New Year tradition here, Chūnlián.
“So, what is Chūnlián, anyway?”
If you happen to visit Taiwan in Lunar New Year holidays, you will see this kind of red paper — they are usually on the wall of many households, companies, government buildings — with beautiful Chinese calligraphy scripts like this:
(Outlookxp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Or this:
.jpg)
(Helanhuaren, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
There you go! These are what we called Chūnlián here.
Basically, Chūnlián (春聯) is a traditional decoration, where we write some Jíxiánghuà (吉祥話) on different styles of red paper. Chūnlián (春聯) literally means “Spring Couplets”, but when it comes to reality, they do not have to be in pairs.
“Uhm, I see there are some styles here and there, though. They are red, and some are written vertically and horizontally. Why?”
Speaking of styles, they could be just a sheet of square paper with one or a few characters on it (Dǒufāng, 斗方), or could be short poetic phrases in two sheets of paper, one on each paper respectively (Duìlián, 對聯), or could be one phrase in a rectangle paper, but horizontally (Héngpī, 橫批). It is up to us to decide which style to make our decoration best!
Besides, people believe that red is a lucky color, and it becomes a tradition to keep it. Writing black characters on Chūnlián is also a tradition too, but we can see that there are more and more “gold” touches in recent years, since it is said that this color brings good fortune as well.
“Got it. So you mentioned something called ‘Jíxiánghuà’?”
Yes! So we write some Jíxiánghuà (吉祥話) on Chūnlián. It could be roughly translated to “blessings” or “lucky words”, and it is usually a set of poetic phrases that show our wishes/blessings of the new year, like staying healthy, getting more money, being more happy and so on. Here is an example that you might see some people have this on their Chūnlián:
恭賀新禧，萬事如意。
Gōnghè xīnxǐ, wànshì rúyì.
Best wishes for the new holidays and happiness throughout the New Year.
And since this year is the year of Ox, some Jíxiánghuà associate with this are also very appreciated:
春花百朵開，金牛引金福
Chūnhuā bǎiduǒ kāi, jīnniú yǐn jīnfú
Hundreds of spring blossoms bloom; Golden Ox brings golden blessings.
“Interesting! I think I saw this somewhere else too.”
Exactly! You can also see Chūnlián in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Korea, Vietnam, Japan and some overseas Chinese families and regions. I personally find it interesting to see Vietnamese Chūnlián from some of Vietnamese folks who write in Vietnamese (in Latin Alphabet!) like this:
.jpg)
(Prenn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
“Tân niên hạnh phúc bình an tiến / Xuân nhật vinh hoa phú quý lai”
(Wishing all the happiness and peace in the New Year, and wishing riches and honors come in the springtime)
“Fantastic! Do you write Chūnlián too, Alex?”
Yeah! I would like to share one of the Chūnlián I wrote in a Dǒufāng (斗方) style - “Wěn (穩)”, meaning “steady”:
2020 is a special year for us, and even now in 2021, there are so many unpredictable things that shape our ways of living… and this is difficult. So, I hope that I can be more steady to tackle any obstacles, be more steady to face different challenges, and be more steady to improve myself constantly.
Hopefully we can soon go back to our normal life, and I also hope that all of the students on Verbling stay healthy, stay persistent in your language learning, stay home, wear masks, and wash hands!
Best Wishes,
Alex
