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Item number 396/1 a from the MOA: University of British Columbia.

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Description

Piece of red rectangular paper with a vertical column of black ink Chinese characters.

History Of Use

Such couplets were and are used on the occasion of the wedding of a son of the family. The vertical papers are pasted on each side of the main door of the house, where the bride will enter, and the horizontal paper across and above the door. The diamond-shaped paper with the characters meaning “double happiness” is pasted on the door itself, and the red cloth is draped across the top of the door and down both sides.

Iconographic Meaning

The colour red is both auspicious and protective, and the sayings written on the papers have auspicious meanings.

Narrative

Mrs. Yau Chan, Shek-ying gave this set of door decorations used in weddings to Elizabeth Johnson to add to the Chinese collections of the Museum of Anthropology. She understood the importance of preserving objects that provided evidence of the local history that she had experienced, and gave significant support to the collection and documentation of many objects in the Museum of Anthropology’s Hong Kong collections.