During this festival, especially in country areas, people like to paste Spring Festival couplets around their doorways. Two vertical messages are placed on either side of the door frame and together pronounce a certain blessing or message of hope for the new year. A short, four-character greeting is also placed horizontally above the doorway to complete the message. The custom dates back to the Qin and Han dynasties, when people used to hang messages written on blocks of peach wood from their doorways in an attempt to ward away evil spirits. Today's Spring Festival couplets rarely deal with warding off evil spirits.
Messages concentrate on welcoming the New Year as a sign of hope.
The content of such messages include descriptions of beautiful Spring scenery, wishing people a better and healthier life or praising some good aspect of life today. However, some couplets, especially in rural areas, still carry superstitious undertones. In January's edition of Tian Feng , the magazine of the Chinese church, one believer from Ganzhou in Jiangxi Province calls on other believers to make use of the tradition Spring Festival couplets in order to counteract superstitious thinking and proclaim the truths of the Gospel. Zhao Qinru believes that in this way, Gospel messages can reach local communities in a style familiar and appealing to them. Believers can simply substitute traditional greetings for new ones based on Scriptural truths but written in a typical couplet style.