Duilian
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In Chinese poetry, a duìlián (simplified Chinese: 对联; traditional Chinese: 對聯) or antithetical couplet is a pair of lines of poetry usually seen on the sides of doors leading to people's homes. The two lines correspond in their metrical length and some properties of each character, such as meaning and tone. The ideal for a duilian is to have few words but deep meaning. For this reason, they use one character per word, as in much Classical Chinese. A special, widely-seen type of duilian is the chunlian, used as a New Year's decoration and expressing happy and hopeful thoughts for the coming year.
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[edit] Requirements
A duilian is only considered as such if the following rules apply:
- Both lines must have exactly the same number of Chinese characters.
- The lexical category of each character must be the same as its corresponding character.
- The tones need to be in order. Usually, this means if one character is of the first or second tone, its corresponding character must not be of the first or second tone.
- The meaning of the two lines need to be related, with each pair of corresponding characters having related meanings too.
[edit] Example
Example of a duilian:
- 書山有路勤爲徑
- shū shān yǒu lù qín wéi jìng
- The mountain of books has one way and hard work serves as the path
- 學海無涯苦作舟
- xué hǎi wú yá kǔ zuò zhōu
- The sea of learning has no end and effort makes the boat
| 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 |
[edit] History
Originating during the Five Dynasties, flourishing during the Ming and Qing dynasties, duilian have a history of more than a thousand years.
[edit] See also
[edit] Gallery
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