Chapter 28: Fun with Spring Festival Couplets
Dujuan is the daughter of Doctor Hu’s wife and her previous husband, and is also Erya’s best friend.
So when Lu Qiniang heard Erya say she was going to find Dujuan, she didn't get suspicious. She just said, "Come back early. Don't eat at someone else's house. It's New Year's Day today!"
Arya didn't answer, obviously she had run far away.
"This girl." Lu Qiniang shook her head.
After she came back, she started rummaging through the boxes and took out a stack of red paper.
But those red papers were not large sheets, but small pieces, like scraps left over after cutting.
"...This is what I saved when I was at the Zhou Mansion." Lu Qiniang said proudly, "When the sixth daughter of the Zhou Mansion got married, I saved all the leftovers from cutting wedding characters. Isn't this going to be useful?"
Xiao Yan looked at the small red strips or squares and asked uncertainly, "Are you going to use this paper to cut window decorations?"
"I don't have such dexterous hands." Lu Qiniang said, "Can't you write? Let's write Spring Festival couplets and put them up!"
As she spoke, she murmured, "Ever since Brother Heyao joined the army, no one in the family can write, so we haven't put up Spring Festival couplets anymore."
Spring Festival couplets are a luxury for people like them who have trouble making ends meet.
The neighbors were all equally poor, and very few of them put up Spring Festival couplets.
Whenever someone puts up Spring Festival couplets, the children will gather around and look at them for a long time.
Red paper is very expensive, and if you ask someone to write Spring Festival couplets, you have to give them something.
Therefore, few people prepare such luxurious things.
Lu Qiniang quickly broke free from her sadness.
During the New Year, you should think about happy things so that you will have good luck throughout the next year.
"You can write, and these red papers are free, so let's put up Spring Festival couplets this year."
"I'm afraid these won't be enough to write Spring Festival couplets."
"If you can't write something long, you can write something short, like 'Look up and see happiness' or 'Go out and see happiness'. That should be fine, right? Oh, and most importantly, 'The pen is full of fat pigs'!"
This is the career she will rely on for her survival next year, so she must have a good start, which is more important than anything else.
Xiao Yan smiled and nodded.
Lu Qiniang took out a pair of scissors and started cutting paper.
Those scraps were really fragmented, so the two of them discussed it and finally decided to cut them into squares of the same size, write a word on each square, and then put them together, sticking them together with glue anyway.
Lu Qiniang carefully cut the red paper and placed it on the table on the kang. Xiao Yan held the pen and pondered for a moment, then wrote quickly.
His writing posture is full of vigor and his handwriting is beautiful.
Lu Qinniang was poor in language skills and mainly illiterate, so she didn't know how to praise his handwriting.
Finally, after a long while, he managed to compose a sentence: "Every word you write is a single word."
Xiao Yan: "...Who wrote it? Is one two?"
"My brother!" Lu Qiniang said, "I can't understand his handwriting. It looks like a tangled ball of thread. He said it was cursive. I don't know why he wrote it in cursive. It's like an insult."
"I can do that too." Xiao Yan lowered his eyes, "If you like..."
"You can also write grass? How come you all know that grass? It's so weird..."
"That's called cursive script. What I'm writing now is regular script."
Xiao Yan patiently explained several fonts to her.
Lu Qiniang nodded, seeming to understand: "The messy ones are cursive script, the steady ones are regular script, and the flattened ones are official script..."
Xiao Yan smiled and nodded approvingly: "You have a very good understanding."
"Ah?" Lu Qiniang looked at him in surprise and pointed at herself, "I'm quick-witted? Xiao Yan, you're really good at coaxing people. My brother said he's never seen anyone as dumb as me, hahahaha..."
"You're not stupid, you're smart."
"Hey, how can you be so good at talking? You're praising me so much that my heart is about to bloom." Lu Qinniang's face showed a hint of embarrassment. "My brother is also very capable. When he is in front of outsiders, he is very good at both speaking and doing things."
But he despises you, and you are still so happy. Xiao Yan sighed secretly in his heart.
"Which font do you like?" he asked Lu Qiniang.
"Regular script! Regular script is correct, cursive script is not correct, and official script looks like it's been squashed. Not good, not good."
"good."
Xiao Yan wrote each word carefully, while Lu Qiniang watched attentively beside him.
But when Xiao Yan asked her if it was okay, she would look away unnaturally, "I only know how to do the splits, what can I see? If you say it's okay, it's okay."
(He Changgong: Who is teasing me? Who still remembers Gousheng, the guy who didn’t even know how to do the splits in “The Second Marriage to a Rough Man”?)
"do the splits?"
"It's just 'person'. This is the only word I know." Lu Qiniang said.
Xiao Yan smiled.
This is quite an image.
He could see that Lu Qiniang really wanted to learn to read, but was probably too embarrassed to say it, so she remained calm and read out each word she wrote.
"Six - livestock - prosper -"
"A bountiful harvest of grains"
"Spring—colors—fill—the—garden—"
Lu Qiniang's lips moved slightly as she took notes silently.
At the end of writing, she suddenly asked, "Where is my 'Fat Pigs in the Pen'?"
"As long as the livestock thrives, that's enough."
"No, no, I just want 'a pen full of fat pigs.' If I don't understand, the pigs won't understand either."
Xiao Yan didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "It's not for pigs to see."
"I read to them, telling them to eat more, sleep more, and grow fat faster. I'm good at raising pigs," Lu Qinniang said excitedly. "Xiao Yan, let me tell you, pigs are very smart..."
When she mentioned pigs, she started talking a lot, from delivering sows to fattening piglets to preventing swine fever...
"By the way, you also have to write 'Pigs Don't Get Sick' for me."
"How about writing 'Invulnerable to All Diseases'?"
"Okay, okay, this is good. As expected, you have to be a scholar to write this."
If she understands this, then the pig must understand it too.
After Xiao Yan finished writing, Lu Qiniang quickly made some paste, took out the part about the pig first, and happily pasted it on the pigpen.
Then when she was about to post the rest, she realized she had forgotten what they were.
It just so happened that Xiao Yan was tired of sitting at this moment, so he leaned on the quilt with his eyes closed and dozed off, seemingly asleep. She didn't feel comfortable waking him up.
Fortunately, Xiao Yan had already put the words together in groups of four.
Just post it randomly, the fat pig is posted all over the pen anyway.
As long as you don't put anything about pigs on the kang where people sleep, you won't make a fool of yourself.
So Lu Qiniang just randomly pasted them everywhere.
Xiao Yan just took a short nap, and when he woke up, he was still a little sleepy.
But when he saw the words "Spring in the Garden" posted on the wall facing him, he suddenly came to his senses.
This, this can’t be posted on the head of the kang!
It would be great to post it in the yard, but if you post it on the kang, the meaning becomes ambiguous.
However, when he told Lu Qiniang that he wanted to put it up in the yard, Lu Qiniang said, "It doesn't matter. Spring is everywhere. I think that's good."
Xiao Yan could only comfort himself that he was probably the only one in the family who had such dirty associations.
Then just pretend it doesn't exist...
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
