 In
China, there used to be a custom to put drawings of the
gate gods on gates during the Chinese New Year. As you
may know, there are many gods worshiped in China, especially
during traditional festivals. Though Chinese have the
traditions of worshipping many gods and most people usually
follow the traditions, religions have never been as deeply
rooted in Chinese as those in many other countries. The
Chinese people are more practical in philosophy or gods.
So different gods are invited for different occasions.
For an example, when they were lack of money, the god
of fortune would be the guest at the table of sacrifice.
So we say, 'A god in need is a god indeed.' No matter
how things happened, however, you can always find a story
proving its inevitability of being there. And the presentation
of the gate gods had no exceptions as well.
It is said that long ago there grew a peach forest.
The king of the peach trees shaded two stone huts in
which lived two brothers, Shen Tu and Yu Lei. Both of
them were so strong that in front of them lions would
bend down their heads, leopards shivered at them and
tigers gave in entirely to promise to serve as guards
in the forest. And the two brothers lived there on the
peaches.
In the Northeast of Mount Duso, there lived a monster
which was said the son of a  spirit
of a bull. By right of the uncommon strength, it made
itself the king of that area. When it heard that the
delicious peaches on the mountain of Duso were magic
in turning an evil into a god, he couldn't wait to go
there. Of course, the monster was refused absolutely
by the brothers. The monster was so angry that he led
more than 300 ghosts to fight against the brothers.
After a fierce fight, the monster was defeated completely
and ran away. But the monster wouldn't bury its axe.
In the dark, he sent a few of the strongest ghosts to
attack the brothers' huts. Though the ghosts appeared
with blue faces, long buckteeth and dark red eyes, the
brothers were very calm and they determined to give
them a hard blow. The elder brother fought ahead with
a hard stem of a tree and the younger followed with
a strong reed rope. When the brother beat down one of
the ghosts, the younger would tie it hard and put it
into the mouth of a tiger. The bothers, Shen Tu and
Yu Lei, won the battle at that night and the ghosts
never dared to annoy them again.
Thus, the reputation of the brothers was spread quickly
around the area, and they also helped a lot of people
in the area. Many years later, when the bothers died,
people thought they had got into the Heaven and became
gods there and served as guards by the gate of the Heaven.
Because the gate gods were once lived in the peach forest,
people thought the branches of peach trees were full
of magic. So it began to get popular for people to hang
a peach board with the bothers' names on it on each
side of their door pinning their hope for peace on the
two giants. When paper was used, a picture of them was
put up instead of those peach boards.
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