【Tianjin】Post Spring Festival couplets

Overview

The Spring Festival of 2017 is coming soon. At this time of year, every household must post Spring Festival couplets and set off firecrackers. Spring couplets evolved from peach stems during the Warring States period more than 2,000 years ago. "Huainanzi" says that peach symbols (peach stems) are carved from peach wood. It is engraved with the incantation of destroying and bringing down blessings, which is changed once a year. Meng Chang, the emperor of Shu after the Five Dynasties, had a whim during the Spring Festival and ordered peach trees to be sliced. He took up a pen and wrote a couplet on it: New Year's Day, the festival number is Changchun. These are the earliest Spring Festival couplets in China. As for the official birth of the name Spring Festival couplets, it was in the Ming Dynasty. After Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, established his capital in Jinling, he issued an edict on New Year's Eve: the homes of ministers and common people must write a couplet to mark the New Year. Later, the Spring Festival couplets were popularized, and every household must post Spring Festival couplets during the Chinese New Year.

Tags

• baking
• cocoa powder
• corn oil
• green pigment
• invert syrup
• jianshui
• low gluten flour
• red yeast rice

Ingredients

Steps

1. 1 Prepare materials.

   

2. 2 I knead a quarter of the dough with cocoa powder into cocoa dough, a quarter into red yeast dough, three-eighths into plain dough, and the rest into green dough. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for more than an hour.

   

3. 3 Make the wall first, cut the original color dough into a rectangle, and use the left spatula to press evenly spaced channels.

   

4. 4 Cut a piece of cardboard of the same width and press it onto the small vertical channel.

   

5. 5 The second row and the first row of the vertical channel are misaligned.

   

6. 6 Make a roof from cocoa dough. Use the cream comb in the picture below to make a mark and carve it out to become a tile.

   

7. 7 The original color dough is used to carve the door frame, and the cocoa dough is used to carve the door.

   

8. 8 Red dough is rolled out and carved with couplets.

   

9. 9 Roll out the red dough flat to carve out the lantern, and use a spoon to press out the lines on the lantern.

   

10. 10 People are first drawn, then decomposed, carved separately on various colored patches, and then put together.

    

11. 11 Carve an old woman and a little girl, then use the red dough to make a bunch of chili peppers, and the whole picture is ready

    

12. 12 Put it in the oven at 160 degrees and bake for 15 minutes. The peppers, little girls, and lanterns are baked for 8 minutes because they are relatively small. Take them out first to prevent them from burning. Continue to bake the remaining large pieces of dough.

    

13. 13 Now that it’s baked, let’s take a look at the enlarged picture.

    

14. 14 There are several ways to embody the words on the couplets. One is to write them with a fine brush dipped in black pigment. The other is to print the fonts, cut them out and paste them on. Another way is to use software to insert them later. Take your pick. I have used all three methods.