Jiangsu student writes Spring Festival couplets using chemical symbols

The couplets Ag Zn Na F Ga Hf Mg and Re Sg Tc Au As Sc Ti went viral on the internet recently. The letters not only represent chemical elements, but also are a pair of Spring Festival couplets posted outside a student's dormitory room at Nanjing Forestry University, Thepaper.cn reported.

The first line of the couplet, Ag Zn Na F Ga Hf Mg, pronounced "Ying Xin Na Fu Jia He Mei" in Mandarin, is similar to the pronunciation for the chemical elements. It means "welcome a new year with blessings and a happy family" in Chinese, and the second line, Re Sg Tc Au As Sc Ti, pronounced "Lai Xi De Jin Shen Kang Tai" in Mandarin, is similar to the chemical elements' pronunciation. It means "good things like fortune will come and all keep healthy", as well as the central line, "get rich quietly".

The couplet was created by Bian Zheng, a freshman majoring in environmental engineering at the College of Biology and the Environment. Li Yong, a counselor at Nanjing Forestry University, happened to pass by his dormitory and noticed the couplet. He found it interesting, so he posted it online, which gained many netizens' attention and likes.

"It is a kind of integration of tradition and modernization, chemistry and humanity, by applying his major to traditional couplets' creation," Li said. "The integration reveals contemporary college students' vigor and intelligence."

Bian said he started to create sentences with chemical elements when he was in his third year of high school with Li Bai's poem, Hard is the Road to Shu. He wrote a couplet, Md As Li N2H4 O Xe Sn and Et Cho F Ag Azole Long Carbon to describe the sentence "Looking up breathless, I can touch the stars nearby; Beating my breast, I sink aground with a long, long sigh," in the poem, which is pronounced, "Men Shen Li Jing Yang Xie Xi, Yi Shou Fu Ying Zuo Chang Tan" in Mandarin.