Chinese New Year New Video

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. :slight_smile: 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:

  1. Thorough knowledge of elements in Chinese
  2. Be able to map the chemical symbols to these Chinese characters
  3. Know about various auspicious phrases suitable for 春聯
  4. Link them all together, including some fuzzy Pinyin (like yíng instead of yín above)
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