In Chinese poetry, a couplet (simplified Chinese: 对联; traditional Chinese: 對聯; pinyin: duìlián) is a pair of lines of poetry which adhere to certain rules (see below). Outside of poems, they are usually seen on the sides of doors leading to people's homes or as hanging scrolls in an interior. Although often called antithetical couplet, they can better be described as a written form of counterpoint. The two lines have a one-to-one correspondence in their metrical length, and each pair of characters must have certain corresponding properties. A couplet is ideally profound yet concise, using one character per word in the style of Classical Chinese. A special, widely-seen type of couplet is the spring couplet (simplified Chinese: 春联; traditional Chinese: 春聯; pinyin: chūnlián), used as a New Year's decoration that expresses happy and hopeful thoughts for the coming year.
Contents |
A couplet must adhere to the following rules:
Example of a couplet:
| Bottom | Top | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| knowledge | 學 | 書 | book |
| sea | 海 | 山 | mountain |
| don't have | 無 | 有 | have |
| border | 涯 | 路 | way |
| painstaking | 苦 | 勤 | diligence |
| makes | 作 | 爲 | becomes |
| boat | 舟 | 徑 | path |
Originating during the Five Dynasties, and flourishing during the Ming and Qing dynasties in particular, duilians have a history of more than a thousand years and remain an enduring aspect of Chinese culture.
Dueling couplets are a popular past time with Chinese speakers,[1] a game of verbal and intellectual dexterity, wit and speed which shares some parallels with the dozens. A notable modern-day example occurs at the 7:24 point of the second segment of the satirical machinima War of Internet Addiction[2] (or at 16:58 of the video's complete running time).