Happy New Year. We’ve made a special video all about how to write chūnlián 春联 (春聯).
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Here’s the ultimate 春聯 for science nerds:
Source: 理工式新年!「元素春聯」太狂 神人一看秒解答
The ultimate challenge is to read that without looking anything up, but otherwise the solution is in the article, I quote:
有超強網友一看到照片,就立刻解答出來對聯上的文字,上聯為「銀鋅鈉氟鎵鉿鎂」(迎新納福家和美),下聯為「錸𨭎鎝金砷鈧鈦」(來喜得金身康泰),橫批則是「氟氯雙醛」(福祿雙全),正中間的字是「氟」(福)。
For beginners and intermediate learners out there, don’t bother. They take a character with a certain sound, like 迎 (yíng), then map it to the pronunciation of an element, like 銀 (yín), which has the same or similar pronunciation, then write the chemical symbol for that element, like Ag for 銀 (silver). To solve this without help, you need:
- Thorough knowledge of elements in Chinese
- Be able to map the chemical symbols to these Chinese characters
- Know about various auspicious phrases suitable for 春聯
- Link them all together, including some fuzzy Pinyin (like yíng instead of yín above)
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