“The Spring Couplet”, also called “couplet”, is a special form of literature in China. The Spring Couplet is composed of two antithetical sentences on both sides of the door, and usually an auspicious phrase, above the gate. The sentence pasting on the right side of the door is called the first line of the couplet and the one on the left the second line. On the eve of the Spring Festival, every household will paste on doors a spring couplet written on red paper to give a happy and prosperous atmosphere of the Festival. In the past, the Chinese usually wrote their own spring couplet with a brush or asked others to do for them, while nowadays, it is common for people to buy the printed spring couplet in the market.
The custom of pasting New Year Prints originated from the tradition of placing Door Gods on the doors of houses. With the creation of board carvings, New Year Prints cover a wide range of subjects. The most famous ones are Door Gods, Three Gods of Blessing, Salary and Longevity, which have some hopes and wishes to an abundant harvest of crops, thriving domestic animals and celebrating Spring Festival. Four producing areas of New Year Prints are Tɑohu ɑwu of Suzhou, Y ɑngliuqing of Tianjin, Wuqi ɑng of Hebei and Weifang of Shangdong. Now the tradition of pasting New Year Prints is still kept in rural China, while it is seldom followed in cities.