Marriage coin charm

[1] Since ancient times, three of the most important events that could occur in the life of a Chinese person in accordance to traditional Chinese culture were success in the imperial examination, which would result in a government position as well as the prestige and wealth that is associated with it, getting married, and having a large number male offspring to carry out the proper duties of filial piety and ancestor worship which were all proscribed to these sons by the Confucian system.

[1] The most common inscriptions that is found on Chinese love charms is Fenghua Xueyue (風花雪月) which literally translate to mean "wind, flowers, snow and moon".

[1] One of the more plausible explanations for the phrase Fenghua Xueyue appearing on marriage numismatic charms is that each word in this context is used to represent a different Chinese goddess.

[1] The inscription may also be a reference to the 4 volume Chinese erotic novel entitled Su'e pian (素娥篇) made during the late Ming dynasty period (which was written around 1640).

[1] In the novel Wu Sansi and Su E are inspired to have sex in a variety of natural settings using 43 different sexual positions, which were all illustrated wood engravings that accompany the text of the novel.

[8] This amulet also features an image of a lotus flower, which feeds the goose and reinforces the symbolism of happy union because of the homophony with the character lian, "to unite", "together".

[8] Some marriage coin charms illustrate how the newlywed couple should perform on their wedding night to meet their responsibilities and obligations to produce children.

[1] Other Chinese wedding charms often have inscriptions like fēng huā yí rén (風花宜人), míng huáng yù yǐng (明皇禦影), and lóng fèng chéng yàng (龍鳳呈樣).

[1][16][17] A common design for Korean marriage charms displays scenes of a heterosexual couple engaging in different positions of sexual intercourse.

[19] Surrounding the couples having sex are the Chinese characters representing the spring (春), wind (風), peaches (桃), and plums (李), which is a reference to the first four characters of a line from the Chang hen ge poem which translates into English as "Gone were the breezy spring days when the peach and plum trees were in bloom" in reference to the death of Yang Guifei.

[22] Some marriage amulets have the obverse inscription Trường Mạng Phú Quý (長命富貴) written in seal script, which translates into English to "Long life, riches, and honour".