Traditional Chinese New Year Pictures share a similar origin with couplets, and both can be traced back to the use of the peach wood charm. Ancient legends like those in the book of Shanhaijing, or the Classic of Mountains and Rivers, tell us that peach wood has long been used to ward off evil.

The book says: In ancient times, there resided hundreds of spirits on an ancient mountain near the East Sea. Two brothers named Shen Tu and Yu Lei who lived nearby were supervisors of ghosts and monsters. At the end of every year, they would climb the mountain and stand under a peach tree there to inspect the monsters. If they found any monster had harmed the people, they would seize it with weed ropes and feed it to the divine tiger. Thus the image of the two brothers became a protective symbol for the residents there.

However, the two brothers could not punish every evil spirits in the nation, nor could they protect the entire population. So the Yellow Emperor decreed that in the days leading up to the Spring Festival, every family should carve peach wood into a model of the brothers and hang them on the door. Tigers were also painted on the doors to ward off the evil spirits.

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, people simply painted the images of the two brothers on their doors. These became the earliest pictures of the so-called Door God, which is the predecessor of New Year Picture.

Since it was quite time-consuming to draw these pictures, some people only wrote the brothers’ name with certain auspicious words on peach wood stuck to the door. Then during the Song Dynasty, an official wrote couplets on peach wood to express his delight at the New Year. As a result, dramatic changes were brought to the function of peach wood charms. They were used not just for keeping evil at bay, but also to express ideas! Either through words--the couplets, or through pictures-- the New Year Pictures.