The origin and meaning of couplets
Spring Festival couplets were not originally called Spring Festival couplets, but called Fu Tao. It is said that the origin of pasting peach symbols is very early, when pasting peach symbols was used to drive away monsters. Legend has it that there was an extremely vicious monster in ancient times, which often did evil and endangered the people, but nothing could stop it. Later, there were two immortals who specialized in exorcism. They subdued the monster with peach branches.
As a result, it was circulated among the people that I was told to hang peach branches engraved with the names of two immortals on the door, and the monsters were afraid to go forward. Later, such peach branches were called peach symbols, and peach symbols became popular.
During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Fu Tao evolved into Spring Festival couplets. According to records, Meng Changjun, the owner of Houshu at that time, asked Zhang Xun to write an inscription on the mahogany. After writing, Meng Changjun thought it was wrong, so he wrote "Qing Yu is in the new year, Changchun is in the festival", which is the first Spring Festival couplets in China.
At that time, it was also called Taofu. Later, with the appearance of paper, mahogany was replaced by red paper. The Spring Festival couplets really appeared in the period of Zhu Yuanzhang in the Ming Dynasty. At that time, Zhu Yuanzhang asked every household to post Spring Festival couplets, so the streets and alleys were covered with Spring Festival couplets.