Fu Tao is a red board used to ward off evil spirits in ancient times, also known as Spring Festival couplets. "Replacing old peaches with new peaches" means replacing old peaches with new peaches. In ancient times, Fu Tao was generally engraved with two door gods, Shen Tu and Lei Yu.
Source: An Shi of Wang Song in Yuanri.
The original poem is firecrackers, and the spring breeze enters Tu Su from send warm. The rising sun sheds light on doors of each household, New peachwood charm is put up to replace the old.
The old year passed with firecrackers, and Tu Su wine was enjoyed in the warm spring breeze. The rising sun shines on thousands of families, and they all take down the old peach blossom symbols and replace them with new ones.
The Development History of Peach Symbol
Ying Shao's "Custom Yi Tong" in the Eastern Han Dynasty said: "The Book of the Yellow Emperor says that in ancient times, there were two brothers, full of tea and melancholy, who lived under a peach tree in Crescent Mountain, where ghosts were simple and simple, and they jumped with reeds to eat tigers. Therefore, the county magistrate painted a picture of a tiger hanging from a reed on the door on New Year's Eve. " Fu Tao first wrote Er Shen's name or depicted images, which later evolved into auspicious words and then developed into dual poems. This is a couplet before papermaking appeared. At the same time, it also shows that the custom of hanging peach symbols in the Spring Festival has been popular at least in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
The door idol is said to have originated from the symbol of peach. "Fu Tao" is a rectangular red board hanging on both sides of the gate. According to the Book of Rites, the peach symbol is six inches long and three inches wide, and the words "Shen Tu" and "Lei Yu" are written on the mahogany board. "On the first day of the first month, I made a peach symbol for this family and named it Xianmu. All ghosts are afraid of it." Therefore, the Qing Dynasty's "Yanjing Shi Sui Ji" said: "Spring Festival couplets, that is, Fu Tao."
In the Five Dynasties, couplets began to appear on the symbols of peaches, replacing the names of Shen Tu and Lei Yu, and people usually wrote some auspicious words on them. Two years after Song Taizu went to Germany, Meng, the king of Shu, tried it early and wrote an inscription for the bachelor on New Year's Eve. The master of Shu was not satisfied with the words written by the bachelor, that is, he wrote "New Year's Day, Qing Yu, Jiajie, Changchun".
Meng Chang's inscription changed the content and nature of the legendary Fu Tao, and changed Fu Tao from the original peach wooden sign into a special style of expressing some thoughts-couplets. Some experts believe that Meng Chang's inscription is the earliest Spring Festival couplets in China.
In order to celebrate the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang issued a decree on New Year's Eve, requiring officials and scholars to post a Spring Festival couplets on their doors. This custom of turning "carving peach symbols" into posting Spring Festival couplets was promoted to the people's portal website by the official court giants overnight. Early the next morning (New Year's Day), Zhu Yuanzhang traveled incognito, strolled the streets and enjoyed the Spring Festival couplets. When he found that a butcher's family didn't post Spring Festival couplets because he had no money to buy paper, he ordered someone to get paper and ink. Now he wrote a couplet for the butcher: split the road of life and death with both hands and cut off the root of right and wrong with one knife.