Couplets 对联

This is a collection of Chinese couplet pieces written by Colleen Ng. Chinese couplets, or 对联 (dway-lee-an) are sets of two complementary poetic lines of equal length, which are rich in meaning when read individually yet much richer in impact when read together as a whole, with the combined context amplifying the semantic coherence of the characters.

Read from the right to the left, couplets are a powerful demonstration of the unique qualities of the Chinese language, which is a modern living example of an active hieroglyphic language. Given that the meaning of Chinese characters are derived from combinations of “pictures”, couplets are effectively synergistic sets of symbols conveying both imagery and meaning, representing a whole greater than the sum of its parts.