New year couplet for the year of the Horse

After ushering in the Gregorian New Year exactly 30 days ago, we are going to ring in the Chinese New Year tonight, the Year of the Horse. Again, I write my own new year couplet (春聯 chunlian) with a Chinese brush, rather than buying a commercially mass-printed one.

I compose another pair of lines for the new year, roughly translated as

Etiquette, music, poetry and books, [we] pass down over hundreds of generations (禮樂詩書傳百代);
[With] blades, spears, swords and halberds, [we] fight across three waters (刀槍劒戟過三江).

The couplet also comes with a banner: Fear neither the literate nor the martial (文武不擋).

My son, Ronne, will be 4 years old in March. It's about the time to teach him some Chinese classical texts for Children, such as Thousand Character Classic (千字文) and Trimetric Classic (三字經), as well as some basic kung-fu exercise.

I hope this couplet bringing in a happy and prosperous year, in which Ronne develops all necessary learning skills and knowledge.

New Year's Day before the New Year's Day of the Year of the Horse

(Click to enlarge and see how I have changed over the past few years, from 1st January 2007 to 2014)

The growth of new social networking websites have definitely made Principal Wei's Weblog redundant. Since 2012, the number of entries produced each year here has dropped to only 10, because of the heavy academic workload and life chores I have to deal with.

However, I insist on maintaining the ritual of counting down to New Year at the same spot, taking a photo thereafter and then announcing it on this weblog.

Again I have to repeat that it has something to do with obsession, just as what I have explained in another entry posted several years ago on this weblog.  I must have been suffering from a mental disorder characterised by a general psychological inflexibility, a chronic preoccupation with rules, procedures, perfectionism and excessive orderliness.

As usual, in most Chinese-speaking regions, we usher in the Gregorian New Year with other revellers on streets before welcoming the Chinese one. Therefore for the eighth time in a row since the year end 2006, I went to the Taipei 101 fireworks show again last night, with my wife and my 3-year-old son, who is going to be 4 in April 2014.

Whatever happens, unless Blogger is shut down, I will keep being obsessed about taking the New Year photo and announcing it here.