Gen Z turns 3,000-year-old Chunlian into a pop culture remix

Spring Festival couplets, or chunlian, trace their origins back more than 3,000 years to the Zhou dynasty. Back then, people hung peach wood charms called taofu on their doors during the New Year to ward off evil spirits. By the Five Dynasties period, auspicious phrases replaced deity names on the wood. During the Song and Ming dynasties, the custom evolved into poetic lines written in black or gold ink on red paper — the classic look we still see today.

A traditional set includes two vertical parallel lines, plus a horizontal banner above the door known as hengpi. Red symbolizes luck and protection, and the phrases usually wish for prosperity, harmony, good harvests, and career success — basically manifesting your entire year in ink ✨

Now enter 2026.

Instead of buying ready-made couplets, Gen Z is designing their own. Think English-Chinese puns, pop culture crossovers, coding language blessings, chemistry formulas, even AI-generated visual couplets 🧑‍💻🎨

The wildest twist? Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter trending as a Year of the Horse lucky icon — thanks to a phonetic coincidence in his Chinese-translated name that cleverly echoes “horse” and “fortune” 🐎

Topics around these abstract, symbolic, cross-dimensional couplets have racked up massive views online.

Three thousand years later, Chunlian is still about manifesting good vibes — just with way more meme energy 😌