Liangping Woodblock New Year Pictures
01 · Historical Records
In the Qing dynasty, Liangping woodblock New Year prints were already "renowned in the capital and the provinces" and sold well in Southeast Asia. In the 1930s and 1940s they were collected by museums in the Soviet Union, the United States, France, and other places, and thus became famous both in China and abroad. By the end of the 20th century, traditional Liangping woodblock New Year prints had been included in large pictorial collections such as The Complete Collection of Chinese Art, The Complete Collection of Chinese Folk Art, Folk Art of the Three Gorges, and Folk New Year Prints.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Liangping woodblock New Year prints of Liangping County, Chongqing, are one of the "Three Wonders" (sanjue) of Liangping folk art — bamboo curtains, New Year prints, and lantern opera — and have a history of about three hundred years. The subjects of Liangping woodblock New Year prints fall broadly into three categories. The first is door gods, mainly works such as "Generals and Marshals," "Holding the Knife and Raising the Axe," "Promotion in Rank," "Raising the Whip," and "Five Sons Winning the Degrees"; the second is myths and legends, mainly "The Mouse Marries Off His Daughter" and "The Qilin Delivers a Son"; the third is opera stories, mainly "Fourth Son Visits His Mother," "Sharing an Umbrella," and "Zhongkui Marries Off His Sister." Liangping County also produced various kinds of decorated letter paper, decorative paper, and door prints. In the painting techniques of the New Year prints and the like, they not only inherited the working procedures of traditional water-printed woodblock New Year prints and the carving techniques of the Sichuan school, but also absorbed the block-carving color-registration techniques of the Anhui and Jinling schools; they further employed the focal perspective of Western painting, skillfully applying light and shade (chiaroscuro) to distinguish near from far. Their compositions are full yet concise, the figures are exaggerated and distorted, the color contrasts are strong, the handling of movement and stillness is apt, and the modeling is plain and bold, making them unforgettable at a glance. With the transformation of the modern social environment, folk customs have also undergone great changes.
Archival Record of the Working Procedures
Inheriting the working procedures of traditional water-printed woodblock New Year prints and the carving techniques of the Sichuan school, they also absorbed the block-carving color-registration techniques of the Anhui and Jinling schools, and employed the focal perspective of Western painting, skillfully applying light and shade (chiaroscuro) to distinguish near from far; their compositions are full yet concise, the figures are exaggerated and distorted, the color contrasts are strong, the handling of movement and stillness is apt, and the modeling is plain and bold, making them unforgettable at a glance.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Liangping woodblock New Year prints take the area around Pingjin Town, Liangping District, Chongqing, as their core production region, with print workshops mostly concentrated at Pingjinpu; their products were shipped along the Yangtze water routes to eastern Sichuan, western Hubei, and throughout Southeast Asia. In the Qing dynasty, Liangping had already formed specialized New Year print workshops and a community of block carvers, which also produced decorated letter paper, decorative paper, and door prints; Pingjin Town was at the same time a major producer of bamboo curtains, and New Year prints together with bamboo curtains and lantern opera are collectively known as the "Three Wonders" of Liangping. Liangping woodblock New Year prints take the ink-line blocks as their bones and hand-applied color as their flesh; figures' faces are mostly colored with the "facial finishing" (kailian) technique, the compositions are full yet concise and the color contrasts strong, carrying a rich folk flavor of eastern Sichuan. The door gods of Liangping New Year prints are mostly printed on whole sheets, with exaggerated and distorted figures and bold outlines; together with Liangping bamboo curtains, they form the principal style of New Year decoration in the homes of eastern Sichuan. Within the town, print workshops and carvers had a clear division of labor: the drafts came from the hands of local painters, while block carving, printing, and hand coloring were carried out as separate tasks; a single door god had to pass through multiple operations — block carving, color registration, and hand coloring — before it could be completed.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Against this background, Liangping woodblock New Year prints have gradually faded out of people's lives; some precious New Year prints and carved blocks have been scattered among the people, a number of inheritors have died one after another, the New Year print techniques now lack successors and are on the verge of extinction, and rescue and protection are urgently needed.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Xu Jiahui 05-2578
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。