Foshan Woodblock New Year Pictures
01 · Historical Records
The production of Foshan woodblock New Year prints flourished during the Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns of the Qing dynasty, and gradually declined after the 1930s.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Foshan City lies in south-central Guangdong Province, in the hinterland of the Pearl River Delta, backing onto Guangzhou to the east and adjoining Hong Kong and Macao—a location of great geographical advantage. In the early period, this type of door-god image was painted and carved directly on the door panels; later, separate wooden blocks were made for painting and carving, and large numbers of impressions were printed, producing woodblock New Year prints that were sold on the market for people to paste up. Classified by technique, Foshan woodblock New Year prints comprise three types: hand-painted originals, woodblock prints, and woodblock prints with fine-brushwork coloring. Classified by subject matter, they fall into three types: door paintings, deity images, and seasonal custom paintings. Their principal functions are ritual offering, praying for blessings, and decorating the environment, reflecting people's wish to ward off evil and usher in good fortune. For the door-god images, the outline is first carved on an ink-line block, successive color overprints in red, yellow, green and other colors are then applied, and finally the faces and garments of the figures are finished by hand with facial detailing and gilding—a complex sequence of process steps. Foshan woodblock New Year prints were produced with Foshan town as the center, and the products were shipped by waterway for sale throughout the Pearl River Delta and Southeast Asia; their production and sales were closely bound up with the flourishing block-carving and book-printing industry of Foshan town. Feng Bingtang commanded the complete set of skills from design drafts and block carving to color overprinting and facial detailing. His Tiandan Door Gods, with a bright red ground and an ink-line structure, is a typical model of Foshan door paintings, and works such as Plum Blossom Boy and the Hehe Immortals have been handed down.
Hand-painted, wood-printed and printed-then-painted types
By technique Foshan prints fall into hand-painted, wood-printed and printed-then-finished types; by subject into door pictures, deity images and seasonal custom pictures, serving worship, blessing and decoration.
Plum-blossom Boys, the Cinnabar Door God and the Two Immortals
The chief works of Feng Bingtang, ranging from simple monochrome woodblock sheets to brightly printed colour sheets and large line-printed hand-painted deity pictures in a strongly Lingnan idiom.
From painted door boards to printed sheets
Foshan door gods were first painted straight onto the door boards; later designs were drawn and cut on separate blocks and printed in quantity for sale, a custom already current in the Guangzhou and Foshan area under the Song and Yuan.
One family's mastery of the whole sequence
Lacking fellow craftsmen to share the work, Feng Bingtang worked out the remaining stages himself until he could complete the whole sequence unaided, the one inheritor in Guangdong with full command of the craft.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
As early as the Song and Yuan dynasties, the custom of carving and painting door-god images was already popular in the Guangzhou and Foshan area. Foshan woodblock New Year prints are a distinctive form within local activities, reflecting the historical roots of Foshan's local culture as well as the basic conditions of Foshan's traditional folk painting and printing crafts.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present, the Feng family is the only remaining inheritor of Foshan woodblock New Year printing; effective protective measures are urgently needed so that this valuable New Year print-making craft can continue. Feng Bingtang (official archive record of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1936, from Foshan, Guangdong. Later, finding no fellow craftsmen to work with, he began to explore and study the other process steps of New Year print production on his own; today he is able to complete the entire production process of woodblock New Year prints independently, and is a representative inheritor who fully masters the traditional Foshan woodblock New Year print craft in Guangdong. The New Year prints he produces are highly varied, ranging from simple single-color woodblock prints and brightly colored woodblock overprinted prints to large, elaborate woodblock-outlined, hand-painted deity images, all rich in the character of Lingnan folk culture. He has participated many times in exhibition, performance and exchange activities in China and internationally. His principal representative works include Plum Blossom Boy and the Hehe Immortals. Representative inheritor of Foshan woodblock New Year printing, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item from the first batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Feng Bingtang 01-0058
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。