Every year during the Spring Festival, every family has to put up Spring Festival couplets. Do you know where the Spring Festival couplets came from? There is also a story here.
Posting Spring Festival couplets was a long, long time ago. At that time, there was a large peach forest on the beautiful Dushuo Mountain. In the peach forest, there is the largest and largest peach tree. There are two bluestone houses under the big peach tree. Two brothers live in the stone houses. The elder brother is called Shen Tu and the younger brother is called Yu Lei. The strength of the two brothers is great, the male lion sees them bow their heads, the evil leopard sees them collapse, and the tiger guards the forest for them.
This is a wild peach forest, where the two brothers were born. Parents have long since died, and the two brothers depended on each other for life and grew up eating wild peaches. When the weather is dry, they bring water from mountain springs; when there are worms, they carefully catch them one by one; The hard work pays off, the peaches from the wild peach forest are fragrant and sweet, especially the big peach tree in the middle of the forest, the fruit is extraordinarily large and extraordinarily sweet. It is said that the peaches on this big peach tree are fairy peaches. Eating this peach can prolong life and become a fairy.
In the northeast direction of Dushuo Mountain, there is a Bison Ridge. There is a wild prince on the Bison Ridge. The wild prince also has a lot of strength. Relying on his own strength, he occupies this side as the king. This wild prince’s heart is more poisonous than snakes and scorpions, his hands are more ruthless than tigers and wolves, he often eats people’s hearts and drinks human blood. When the wild prince heard that there were fairy peaches on Dushuo Mountain, and eating them could make him immortal, his saliva was three feet long, and he immediately sent someone up to Dushuo Mountain.
When the visitor came to the peach forest, he ordered the Shentu brothers to present the peaches. The brothers smiled coldly and said, “This peach is only for the poor and not for the king.” After speaking, they drove the visitor down the mountain.
When Ye Prince heard his subordinates’ remarks, he was so angry that he was so angry that he immediately brought three hundred people to Dushuo Mountain. The Shentu brothers also took the guard forest tiger to welcome them out of the peach forest. The two sides met, and in a fierce battle, the wild prince was beaten to pieces and fled in embarrassment.
The wild prince fled back to Bison Ridge, thinking about Xiantao, thinking that the tea and rice are not fragrant, thinking of revenge and sleepless day and night. He thought and thought, until he lost three layers of skin on his head and added three grooves on his forehead, and finally came up with a bad idea.
On a windy and dark night, the Shentu brothers were sleeping soundly in the stone house. Suddenly, they heard a movement outside. They hurriedly got up and opened the door. Looking out, they saw dozens of ghosts coming from the northeast. Green eyes, strangely shaped, wailing, rushing towards the stone house. The brothers were innocent all their lives and had never done anything bad, so they were not afraid at all in the face of evil spirits. Shen Tu took a peach branch to meet him, and Yu Lei grabbed the reed rope and followed behind. Shen Tu grabbed at the front, Yu Lei tied at the back, and after a while, dozens of ghosts were all tied up and fed to the tigers one by one.
It turned out that these ghosts were all dressed up by the wild prince and his subordinates. They wanted to scare the Shentu brothers away, but they lost their lives.
The next day, the news spread all of a sudden, and people thanked the Shentu brothers for killing the people, and the brothers’ reputation spread farther and farther. Later, when the two brothers passed away, it is said that they became immortals and went to heaven. God ordered them to be responsible for punishing all ghosts. When they encountered evil spirits, they tied them with reed ropes and fed them to tigers. It is also said that because the peach forest was planted by the Shentu brothers, it can also exorcise ghosts and ward off evil spirits. Since then, during the festivals, people have cut two pieces of peach wood, with the names of Shentu and Yulei written on them, and hung them on both sides of the door to show the meaning of warding off evil and keeping the family safe. This is the original Spring Festival couplet in my country, also called “Peach Symbol”.
Years have passed, and every year people hang “Peach Talismans”. Until the time of the Five Dynasties, the monarch of Houshu was called Meng Chang, and he inscribed two sentences on the “Peach Fu”, “Yuqing in the New Year, Jiajie No. Changchun”, hanging on both sides of the door. This is the first couplet couplet in my country.
Later, when Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, established the capital in Nanjing, he ordered that on New Year’s Eve, every public servant’s house should have a Spring Festival couplet attached to the door. At this time, the Spring Festival couplets were already written on red paper. At first, the Spring Festival couplets were limited to the official households, and later, the common people’s homes were also posted. Since then, sticking Spring Festival couplets during the Spring Festival has become a custom of the Chinese people, and it has been passed down to the present.