Outside of poems, they are usually seen on the sides of doors leading to people's homes or as hanging scrolls in an interior.

A duilian is ideally profound yet concise, using one character per word in the style of Classical Chinese.

A special, widely-seen type of duilian is the chunlian (simplified Chinese: 春联; traditional Chinese: 春聯; pinyin: chūnlián), used as a New Year's decoration that expresses happiness and hopeful thoughts for the coming year.

Often, duilians are written on red paper and stuck on walls.

Dueling duilians are a popular pastime with Chinese speakers,[1] a game of verbal and intellectual dexterity, wit, and speed which shares some parallels with the dozens.