Background
Our elder son Jason got married to Miss Florence Lau on July 26th 2014 in Vancouver. For that occasion, I composed a Chinese wedding couplet with the help of a friend and then asked another friend who is a calligrapher to write it out in Chinese ink on red paper. Then I hung it in on the wall of the dining room in our house a week before the wedding day. I also prepared some explanatory notes for those who wanted them, as below.
Some thoughts that motivated the writing: Jason plays the flute and the piano, and Florence plays the piano and the violin to performance level. The allusion to the soaring dragon was the suggestion of a friend, but I avoided too many allusions to the classics, making it easier for those not fluent in classical Chinese. The reference to a fine home is also an approving remark referring to the fact that the young couple had taken out a mortgage on a townhouse before getting married. The double meaning of “accompany” was deliberate. Altogether I aimed to create a lively musical mood.
The Wedding Couplet with Explanatory Notes
The couplet is a traditional Chinese poetic form with two lines of Chinese characters of various lengths composed for special occasions like the Chinese New Year, birthdays and weddings. The requirement is that each character in one line should correspond to the character in the same order in the other line, in grammatical category and other ways. The couplet is hung vertically on the two sides of the main door, hall or room, from right to left. There may also be a character or four-character idiom between them, horizontally above the door, arranged also from right to left. For New Year and wedding, the paper used is usually red., being the colour of happiness.
The couplet was composed by me, with help from Mr Yu Man Po (布裕民先生), a learned Chinese scholar and an old friend of the family. The calligraphy was kindly done by Mrs Elsie Shum (李麗莊女士), in what is known as “the running style” 行書.
Besides speaking to the occasion of the wedding, the couplet celebrates the musical talents of the couple, with specific reference to the musical instruments of the flute and the piano. (The traditional Chinese instrument chin 琴 is the same word as琴 in 鋼琴 the piano.)
The horizontal four-character idiom 永結同心 means “two hearts are forever knotted” and refers directly to marriage. The idiom in the first line, the last four characters, is 載歌載舞 and means “to sing and dance at the same time”. The idiom in the second line is 宜室宜家. It comes from a wedding poem in “The Book of Poetry” (12th to 3rd centuries BC), edited by Confucius (551-479 BC). It means “to make a harmonious and orderly house”. The lines also suggest welcoming the bride home and the future prosperous career of the groom. Being the queen of all birds, the phoenix symbolizes a beautiful lady. Dragon stands for a strong man, and is associated with emperors. In the Taoist book of I-Ching, dragon represents the king or prosperity. It also suggests fertility, bringing rain to the land.
The idiom and the couplet:
橫幅:永結同心
笛聲引彩鳳載歌載舞
琴韻伴飛龍宜室宜家
Character by character translation:
Idiom across the door:
Forever – knot – united – heart
The couplet:
Flute – sound -- attract – colourful -- phoenix – full of/carry – music – full of/carry -- dance
Piano – tunes -- accompany – soaring -- dragon – fine – house – fine -- home
English translation:
Idiom across the door:
Two hearts are forever united as one.
The couplet:
Tunes from the flute attract the colourful phoenix; the party is full of songs full of dancing.
Music from the piano accompanies the flying dragon; the couple make a fine house a fine home.