The red paper was bought at the department store.
Unlike modern times when ready-made Spring Festival couplets are available, couplets then couldn't be written casually; they needed to reflect the characteristics of the current era.
So by the end of the year, the homes in the village with a little calligraphy skill started to get lively. Neighbors would bring their red paper to have couplets written.
In past years, Gu Lingling would follow Gu Juan around all day, feeling melancholy and hardly speaking. She didn't even write her own family's couplets, let alone for others.
But this year was different. Gu Lingling had already agreed early on to help several families write couplets, using the ink they usually practiced large characters with.
Her calligraphy was good, and she was well-read in the red books and the poems of great figures, so her couplets were mostly derived from those quotes.
"Our Lingling's handwriting is really good," the old village chief praised.
