While people in modern times send new year greetings easily on social network apps, in ancient times it was a much more complicated ritual.
In China, the origin of delivering new year greeting cards can be traced back to the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).
During that time, people began making name cards, writing their name, age, hometown, official position, personal statement on long bamboo or wood sticks.
These sticks were called ming ci. The character ming means “name”, and ci is literally translated as “prick”. The same term is still used to refer to “name card” in today’s Japan.
The number of ming ci a person received during the Han dynasty was a symbol of that person’s social status. Some would even put a red bag outside their gate to receive the sticks, seeing it as the same as “receiving blessings”.
It is widely understood that the name cards began to be used in new year greetings during the Tang dynasty (618-907), for two reasons.
The first reason was the Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, was first recognised as a national holiday during that time.
The second was the popularity of the paper medium. People no longer needed to carry bamboo and wooden sticks around.
It was also during the Tang dynasty that networking with teachers using name cards went viral among students, to have a chance to be recommended for the imperial examination.
During the Song dynasty (960-1279), new year greeting cards prevailed, especially in the prosperous capital city, Bianliang.
Unlike today’s new year greetings that can be easily sent to hundreds just by tapping some buttons on the screen, it was a much more difficult task to greet hundreds in person at that time.
So some resourceful people thought of the method of letting their servants delivering new year greeting papers to those that were more remote, only visiting those important in person.
The new year greetings delivered by the servants were poetically named “flying letters”.
Even the “flying letters” had hierarchy.
For more important people the servants would bring a box that contained gifts apart from the greeting card, and hand it to the gatekeeper. For the rest they simply put the card into the red bag.
The content of the ancient new year greeting cards was simple and generic.
For example, a documented new year greeting by the Northern Song dynasty poet Qin Guan only had 17 characters, and only two were the greeting message that said “Happy New Year”.
Sending flying letters was so popular during the Song dynasty, that it even inspired impostors.
According to Guixin Zashi, a collection of anecdotes written by Zhou Mi during the Southern Song dynasty, Zhou’s uncle wanted to send new year greeting cards but did not have a servant, so he got a visiting servant drunk and replaced his master’s cards with his own.
as printing techniques advanced, people also became dissatisfied with blank paper.
During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), new year greetings were written on paper printed with plum blossom patterns, which represent the literati’s noble and elegant characters. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
