Fengxiang Woodblock New Year Pictures
01 · Historical Records
By 1950, Fengxiang woodblock New Year prints still numbered more than 690 varieties, divided into five major categories: door paintings, ten-beauties (shimei) paintings, custom paintings, opera-story paintings and spirit-code (shenma) paintings; at their peak, annual output and sales reached 6 million sheets. In the 1960s and 1970s, Fengxiang New Year prints were on the verge of extinction.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Fengxiang County, located in the western part of the Guanzhong Plain in Shaanxi Province, is a well-known woodblock New Year print production area in China. Fengxiang woodblock New Year prints are entirely hand-carved and printed by traditional methods, with partial hand-painted dyeing and filling, plus overprinting in gold and silver; the colors are strongly contrasted and the forms full and exaggerated, preserving the simple, natural artistic style of ancient New Year prints. For several hundred years they circulated through the vast regions of Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai and Sichuan, and were deeply loved by the people. The Shaanxi Provincial Department of Culture, the Shaanxi Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Shaanxi Provincial Folk Literature and Art Association once awarded the title of 'Shaanxi Folk New Year Print Family' to Tai Shiqin, Tai Yi and Tai Liping, the second-, third- and fourth-generation directors of the Xifeng Shixing Painting Workshop.
Door, ten-beauties, custom, opera-story and deity prints
By 1950 Fengxiang still had over six hundred and ninety designs in five classes — door pictures, ten beauties, custom scenes, opera stories and deity prints — with an annual peak of six million sheets before near extinction in the 1960s and 70s.
The Xifeng Shixing studio and the Tai printmaking lineage
The provincial culture department and literary federation named Tai Shiqin, Tai Yi and Tai Liping, three generations of the Xifeng Shixing studio, a Shaanxi printmaking family; the Tai ancestral record shows eight households printing before 1507 and twenty generations since.
The Fengyi New Year Print Society
Founded after 1978 under Tai Yi to collect, order, study and recut scattered old designs; his eldest son Tai Liping took it over in 1984 and issued the two-volume Anthology of Fengxiang Woodblock Prints.
Tai Yu's prints and his Fengxiang album
Tai Yu created dozens of designs — Tiger Head, Lion Rolling the Embroidered Ball, the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety, the Four Seasons Heralding Joy and the God of Longevity — and compiled the Fengxiang album of 1989, reprinted nearly ten times.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Fengxiang woodblock New Year prints were produced with Nanxiaoli Village as the center, where the Tai clan lived in community and carved and printed for generations; the designs were sold along the Fengxiang and Baoji trade routes to Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai and Sichuan. Door paintings and spirit-code prints were used in the greatest quantities; printing households rushed to print them before the twelfth lunar month, and peddlers carried them on shoulder poles for sale in the countryside of Guanzhong and eastern Longdong.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
According to the ancestral records of the Tai family of Nanxiaoli Village, Fengxiang County, before the second year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming dynasty (1507), eight households of the Tai family were already engaged in New Year print production, and the lineage has continued for 20 generations to the present. After 1978, Tai Yi, the third-generation inheritor of the Xifeng Shixing Painting Workshop, presided over the founding of the Fengyi New Year Print Society, which excavated, collated, studied and reproduced ancient print designs scattered among the people, reviving the ancient folk traditional art of Fengxiang woodblock New Year prints. After 1984, Tai Liping, Tai Yi's eldest son, took charge of the Fengyi New Year Print Society and continued to strive for the rescue and protection of Fengxiang woodblock New Year prints. Through Tai Liping's efforts, the two volumes of Selected Fengxiang Woodblock New Year Prints were compiled and published. At present, only a handful of people in northwest China are still able to make New Year prints, and Tai Liping is the only one who can engage in creative work and research; the transmission and continuation of the Tai family's Fengxiang woodblock New Year prints face a crisis and urgently require rescue and protection. Tai Yu (official archive record of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1932, from Fengxiang, Shaanxi. Representative inheritor of Fengxiang woodblock New Year printing, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item from the first batch, and a folk arts and crafts artist of Shaanxi Province. His New Year prints have bold, rugged forms, full compositions, and strongly contrasting red and green. Over his lifetime he created several dozen New Year prints, including Tiger Head, Lion Rolling a Ball, The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars, Seasonal Auspices and the God of Longevity. In 1989 he compiled and edited the album Fengxiang Woodblock New Year Prints, which has been reprinted nearly ten times since and played an important role in publicizing and introducing Fengxiang woodblock New Year prints. Tai Liping (official archive record of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1952, from Baoji, Shaanxi. Representative inheritor of Fengxiang woodblock New Year printing, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item from the first batch; master of Chinese arts and crafts; researcher in folk art creation at the Chinese National Academy of Arts. In 1968 he began to specialize in the design, carving and painting of folk New Year prints. In 1978, under the guidance of his father Tai Yi, he founded the Fengxiang Nanxiaoli Arts and Crafts Research Association, successively excavating, collating and reproducing more than 300 pieces (sets) of ancient woodblock New Year print designs and creating more than twenty new print designs. In 1980, together with his father, he founded the Fengxiang Fengyi New Year Print Society and continued to restore and create New Year prints. In the 1990s he edited and published volumes one and two of Selected Fengxiang Woodblock New Year Prints, which were highly acclaimed. He has trained several dozen block carvers and printers of Fengxiang New Year prints; besides three of his children who now work in New Year print production, he has trained a number of woodblock New Year print enthusiasts as reserve talent.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Tai Yu 01-0060
- Tai Liping 01-0061
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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