Woodblock New Year Pictures
01 · Historical Records
Woodblock New Year prints have a long history; according to legend they first appeared in the Han dynasty. In the Song dynasty they were called “paper pictures,” in the Ming dynasty “picture sheets,” and it was not until the Qing dynasty that the name “New Year prints” was formally established. Dongchangfu woodblock New Year prints have a history of more than three hundred years, and for a time reached their peak during the Republican period.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Woodblock New Year prints are a popular traditional art form used by the Chinese people at New Year time to welcome the new year and receive blessings. They convey the life ideals of the common people, reflect many characteristics of social life and folk culture, and have become an important component of Chinese folk art. Woodblock New Year prints are printed with the traditional woodblock water-printing method; their emergence is closely bound up with the art of woodblock engraving and printing. Over the course of a thousand years of development, a number of relatively concentrated production centers for woodblock New Year prints gradually took shape; each center maintained technical exchange with other regions while preserving its own originality in subject matter and form. By subject matter, woodblock New Year prints fall into five major categories: driving away evil, praying for blessings and auspiciousness, opera stories and legends, festive decoration, and scenes of daily life and custom. Their principal formats include gongjian (tribute-slip) sheets, zhongtang (central-hall) scrolls, paired screens (duiping), calendar pictures (lihua), and kang-surround prints (kangwei). Woodblock New Year prints employ a great variety of techniques with fresh, bright colors, and regional differences have given rise to many different styles. They are of high aesthetic quality, with distinctive artistic features and a rich load of information, embodying profound national psychology and traditional humanistic values. From the Luxi (western Shandong) plain to all parts of Shandong, and from Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei, and Henan to the three provinces of the Northeast, Dongchangfu woodblock New Year prints have found markets everywhere. Dongchangfu woodblock New Year prints merge New Year prints with door-god pictures, possessing both aesthetic appreciation value and the functions of exorcising evil and praying for blessings. Their subjects are drawn from a wide range of sources: real life, historical figures, opera stories, and myths and legends, as well as expressions centered on the auspicious themes of fortune (fu), prosperity (lu), longevity (shou), and joy (xi). These New Year print works have simple compositions, a lofty tone, and a strong sense of overall unity; their figures are exaggerated in form, with full, plain bodies; their lines are rounded and fluid, combining hardness and softness; and their colors are bright and gorgeous, with strong contrast. Dongchangfu woodblock New Year prints have always had only “rough blocks” (草版), that is, printing without painting: the entire image is produced by color-separated overprinting from woodblocks. There are usually five basic colors — red, yellow, gray, blue, and black — and at most “seven colors on eight blocks.” The printed New Year prints are a riot of color and strongly decorative; the faces are generally left uncolored, so the figures stand out strikingly on the surface of the picture.
Pictures of tilling and weaving, and opera stories
The inheritor Luang Xikui drew widely on the tilling-and-weaving series, opera tales and folk legend, subjects that answered both the rural calendar and festival wishes.
Exaggerated head-to-body ratio
Simple compositions with round, flexible line and deliberately oversized heads — up to a quarter or a third of the figure — legible from afar and easy to colour.
The four production centres
Centred on East Gate Lane, Qingxiao Lane, Xudiqkou and Dazhao, the workshops shipped their prints by canal, giving the town its reputation as a wharf of New Year pictures.
Three centuries and a Republican peak
Over three centuries old and at its height in the Republican era, with draughtsmen, block-cutters and printers working in separate trades on a single print.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Dongchangfu woodblock New Year prints are a folk art form transmitted in Liaocheng, Shandong Province, distributed mainly in the towns and villages of Dongguan Street and Qingxiao Street within the old city of Dongchangfu in Liaocheng City, Shandong; Xudikou in Tangyi Town; and Dazhao in Liangshui Town. Dongchangfu woodblock New Year prints are a vivid reflection of local social life, history, and culture; they have rich cultural connotations and can serve as reference for researchers of folk art.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Woodblock New Year Pictures · Woodblock New Year Pictures · Woodblock New Year Pictures · Woodblock New Year Pictures · Woodblock New Year Pictures.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Luan Xikui (related inheritor, official archival record): Male, Han ethnicity, born April 1939, native of Liaocheng City, Shandong Province. The blocks he carves draw on a wide range of subjects, including farming-and-weaving scenes, opera stories, and folk legends. The blocks he carves have simple compositions and a strong sense of overall unity; the lines are rounded and fluid, combining straightness and curvature, hardness and softness; the figures are exaggerated in form, with the heads — one-quarter to one-third of the full body height — being especially prominent. At a time when the survival of traditional woodblock carving has become ever more difficult, he has persistently continued the practice of woodblock carving and has taught the technique without reservation to enthusiasts of woodblock carving. Representative inheritor of Woodblock New Year Prints (Dongchangfu Woodblock New Year Prints), a project in the fifth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Han Jianfeng 04-1808
- Chen Yiwen 04-1809
- Luan Xikui 05-2677
- Zhao Guoqi
- Zhang Rongqiang
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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