(Photo/Fan Junyan)

Two large couplets, 15 meter high and 2 meter wide, were seen on Zhonghua Gate in Nanjing City on January 18, ahead of the Spring Festival.

The year 2025 is the Year of the Snake according to Chinese lunar calendar. This year’s festivities are particularly special following UNESCO’s inscription of the Spring Festival on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in last December.

This year marks the tenth time that Nanjing has decorated its historical city wall gates with couplets, a traditional way for Chinese to celebrate the Lunar New Year. The unveiling ceremony was jointly hosted by the Publicity Department of the CPC Nanjing Committee, Xinhua Daily Media Group, Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, Bank of China’s Jiangsu Branch, Jiangsu Calligraphers Association, and Jiangsu Couplet Research Association.

This celebration creatively integrates the over 650-year-old Ming City Wall with ancient cultural traditions such as calligraphy, couplets and folk customs, which have been passed down for thousands of years.

Experts curated auspicious verses for the couplets that adorn Nanjing’s 13 city gates. Sun Xiaoyun, Chairwoman of the Chinese Calligraphers Association, displayed her expertise with the couplets for Zhonghua Gate.

In a display of cultural exchange, calligraphers also wrote the character ‘fu’ (meaning ‘good fortune’) together with international students from Pakistan, Malaysia, Morocco, Singapore and Kazakhstan.

The event also featured a lion dance performance as well as exhibitions of intangible cultural heritage items, such as Jinling scripture engraving techniques, paper-cutting, lanterns, clay figures, and tiger-headed shoes.