Woodblock New Year Pictures
01 · Historical Records
Woodblock New Year prints have a long history. According to legend, they already appeared in the Han dynasty; in the Song dynasty they were called 'paper pictures' (zhihua); in the Ming dynasty they were called 'painting posters' (huatie); and only in the Qing dynasty were they formally given the name 'New Year prints' (nianhua). Zhangqiu woodblock New Year prints were introduced into Yanggu County during the Yuan dynasty and have a history of several hundred years to this day. Before the late Qing and early Republican period, the print shops opened in Yanggu were run mainly by people from Shanxi; only later did local people gradually take over their operation. In the late Qing and early Republican period, Zhangqiu Town had three comparatively large print shops — Yuanmaoyong, Luxingju, and Jingshunhe — each of which used more than 1,500 reams of printing paper; the woodblock New Year prints they produced were sold to Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, and the three provinces of Northeast China.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Woodblock New Year prints are a popular traditional art form through which ordinary Chinese people welcome the new year and usher in blessings at New Year time. 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 fine art. Woodblock New Year prints are produced by the traditional woodblock water-printing method, and their emergence is closely related to woodblock printing. Over a development process of thousands of years, a number of relatively concentrated production centers for woodblock New Year prints gradually took shape. Each center maintained technical exchanges with other regions while preserving its own originality in subject matter and form. In terms of subject matter, woodblock New Year prints fall into five broad categories: exorcising evil and warding off misfortune, praying for blessings and welcoming auspiciousness, operatic texts and legends, festive decoration, and scenes of daily life and customs. Their main formats include gongjian (tribute-paper sheets), zhongtang (center-hall scrolls), duoping (paired screens), calendar prints, and kangwei (kang-surround borders). Woodblock New Year prints employ diverse techniques and bright colors, and regional differences have given rise to a variety of styles. They are of high aesthetic quality, possess distinctive artistic features, carry a wealth of information, and embody a profound national psychology and traditional humanistic values. Yanggu County, Shandong Province, lies on the western Shandong plain on the north bank of the Yellow River, and is administered by Liaocheng City, Shandong, a place known as the 'water city north of the Yangtze'. Later, Liu Zhensheng, owner of the Jingshunhe shop, moved his shop to Liaocheng and ran the New Year print business under the names 'Zhangqiu Jingshunhe', 'Zhangqiu Jingshun', 'Dongchang Jingshun', and 'Laodian Jingshun', promoting the development of Dongchang woodblock New Year prints. Zhangqiu woodblock New Year prints feature novel subjects and diverse forms, with more than three hundred varieties. Their blocks are carved with precision and their printing is exquisite; the lines are smooth and concise, and the compositions are full and evenly balanced. Figures are portrayed in a plain yet exaggerated manner with distinctive modeling: the eyes are narrow and long, the eyelid lines are clearly drawn, and the bridges of the nose and the nostrils are slim and narrow. The palette relies on eight colors — bright cyan, bright red, secondary red, bright green, dark green, vermilion red, yellow, and blue — at once vivid and restrained.
The three great shops
Three large shops each consumed some fifteen hundred reams of paper and sold their prints across Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and the northeast.
Shanxi masters and local hands
Shanxi men ran the shops until the Republican era, bringing block designs that merged with local practice to produce a style part Jin and part northern Henan.
Yan Junzhen and the wartime prints
Yan Junzhen worked with union cultural cadres to design new wartime prints, whose bold simplicity raised the resistance spirit of the local populace.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
During the War of Resistance against Japan, Yan Junzhen, owner of the Yuanmaoyong shop, together with the other print shops, cooperated with literary and art workers of the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Federation of Literature and Art to create a batch of woodblock New Year prints with new subject matter, greatly arousing the anti-Japanese enthusiasm of local patriotic soldiers and civilians.
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
During the War of Resistance against Japan, Yan Junzhen, owner of the Yuanmaoyong shop, together with the other print shops, cooperated with literary and art workers of the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Federation of Literature and Art to create a batch of woodblock New Year prints with new subject matter, greatly arousing the anti-Japanese enthusiasm of local patriotic soldiers and civilians. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the local print shops printed jointly under the organization of the supply and marketing cooperatives; after the reform and opening up they reverted to individual operation. The subjects of Zhangqiu woodblock New Year prints have always stayed close to farm work, opera, and the seasonal calendar, and the figures and objects in the prints preserve details of daily life in the Hebei-Shandong-Henan border region of the late Qing and early Republican period.
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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