Chapter 185 couplets of my family

I am interested in calligraphy and paintings hanging on other people's walls, especially couplets. This interest has been developed since I was a child.In the article "My Childhood" I wrote in 1979, I mentioned that my first text was a couplet: It is possible to read three tombs, five classics, eight records and nine hills, but from this pair of couplets, the owner's life experience, vision, hobbies and personality cannot be seen.When I was eleven years old and went back to my hometown Fuzhou, I saw a couplet written by my grandfather on both sides of the portrait of my great-grandfather on the wall in the back hall:

It turns out that my great-grandfather passed away on the Duanyang Festival, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It is customary in our country to wrap five-color silk threads around children's wrists on the day of Duanyang Festival, which is called life-extending silk, wishing him a long life.So every time my grandfather saw the five-color silk on the wrists of the children on the Duanyang Festival, he would think of his father, and had a sad question about whether the "five-color silk" could "continue life". Since then, I have paid attention to every pair of couplets in the hall and living room of our hometown, many of which were written by my grandfather himself, such as:

This is a pair of self-encouraging sentences, which fully describe my grandfather's calm and noble character. A little older, in the guest room of my father in Jianzi Lane, Beijing, I saw a pair of couplets given to my father by the former imperial censor Jiang Chunlin: Lou Chuan still saw that General Han still had small characters next to the Shanglian, saying that he "goed south from Beijing, and it was difficult to travel in the snow." I met my father in Zhifu and liked his demeanor of "Qiu with a singing pot, and a Confucian general". , Just write this couplet as a gift.When my father explained the couplet to me, he also said that he and Jiang Chunlin were just friends for the first time. At that time, Jiang Chunlin was dismissed because he impeached Prince Qing. "A gift from a friend, Zhang hung it up.

In the early 1930s, another pair of couplets from Mr. Sa Zhenbing was added to my father’s living room: Ups and downs do not change the relationship between old friends is about the decades of friendship between the two old people.When my father passed away in the early 1940s, I was not in Beijing. I don’t know where these precious relics have gone! When I grew up, I went to the United States and Europe. Of course, I couldn’t see the couplets in the homes of foreign friends. There were only picture frames and photos of my ancestors.In Japan, the old-style houses are almost surrounded by paper doors. Only the wall "between the beds" can be hung with calligraphy and painting, but it is not a couplet, but a very elegant calligraphy or painting, and another A flower in a vase is elegant and clean.Japanese pavilions and gardens are similar to those in China, with mountains and water, and perhaps even more quaint, but there are no couplets on the couplets and pillars.Not to mention the forest gardens in Europe and America!

In my whole life, I can see good couplets everywhere in the homes of teachers and friends or in scenic spots in China.The text is good, the characters are good, it is a pleasure to read.I thought that we Chinese should continue our unique and beautiful traditions, let our children be influenced by their ears and eyes from an early age, and give them a beautiful and artistic atmosphere!