Brush with the past: Spring Festival calligraphy

A couple holds Spring Festival couplets they wrote at the 9th Laoximen couplets event in Shanghai on January 24.[Photo/icpress]

With the Lunar New Year approaching, many people have embraced the ancient custom of writing Spring Festival couplets with an ink brush.

The couplets are a few lines of poetry usually displayed on the front doors of a home.

In the past decade or so, fewer people chose to write the couplets themselves and instead bought printed ones. In recent years, however, Spring Festival calligraphy has regained popularity as part of the revival of traditional Chinese culture.