Four Chinese Elegiac Couplets
Chinese couplets, or dulian, also known as ying lian (pillar couplets) or dui zi (antithetical couplets) in Chinese. It can be classified into chunlian (couplets for Spring Festival), wedding couplets, longevity couplets, elegiac couplets, decorative couplets, trade couplets, social couplets, and miscellaneous couplets including facetious or humorous couplets. Couplets can be long or short. The shortest one contains one or two characters, and the longest one several hundred characters, which can be seen on ancient Chinese architecture. The structure of the couplets can be zheng dui (parallel in meaning), fan dui (antithetical in meaning), liushui dui (same meaning expressed in two sentences, e.g. a couplet), and jijiu dui (a couplet made of two lines from different poets), etc.
