The Four Masters of New Year Paintings
The woodblock New Year paintings in Yangjiabu, Weifang, Shandong, Mianzhu New Year paintings in Sichuan, Taohuawu, Jiangsu, and Yangliuqing, Tianjin have long been famous in history and are known as the "Four Masters of New Year Paintings" in China. .
▲Taohuawu, Suzhou
Taohuawu wood-block New Year pictures are the main folk wood-block New Year pictures in Jiangnan, China. Taohuawu is located north of Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. (Taohuawu New Year pictures are located under the north city of Changmen, Suzhou, Jiangsu) Taohuawu New Year pictures originated from the engraving printing process in the Song Dynasty. They evolved from embroidered images and developed into a folk art genre in the Ming Dynasty. They were at their peak during the Yongzheng and Qianlong years of the Qing Dynasty, and were produced every year. There are more than one million Taohuawu woodblock New Year pictures. At the end of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Qing soldiers besieged Suzhou, which severely damaged the production of Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings, and it has been in a sluggish state ever since. It was not until the early 1950s that the Suzhou Federation of Literary and Art Circles organized artists to resume production, and later the "Suzhou Taohuawu Woodblock New Year Picture Society" was established, making great progress in renovating and innovating.
Taohuawu New Year pictures mainly come in the form of door paintings, middle paintings and screen strips. Among them, the door paintings can be said to be a collection of door gods from all over the ages. Taohuawu New Year pictures are printed using a one-color woodblock overprinting method. The craftsmanship is exquisite. A painting needs to be overprinted four to five times to more than ten times, and some also need to go through "gold tracing", "silver sweep" and "powder application". and other processes. In terms of color, there are peach red, bright red, blue, purple, green, light ink, lemon yellow and other colors. In terms of artistic style, Taohuawu New Year pictures have rich compositions, bright colors, strong decoration, and a rich flavor of life. In terms of character creation, knife skills and coloring, it has the characteristics of simple, naive, concise and rich folk art. Therefore, it has been sold well at home and abroad for hundreds of years and is collected by museums and art galleries in many European countries.
The printing of Taohuawu New Year pictures uses both coloring and color printing. The composition is symmetrical, plump, and the colors are gorgeous. Purple red is often used as the main tone to express the joyful atmosphere. Basically, they are all produced with color printing. The engraving, color and shape are unique. The exquisite and elegant Jiangnan folk art style mainly expresses traditional folk aesthetic content such as auspiciousness and celebration, folk life, drama stories, flowers, birds, vegetables and fruits, and exorcism of ghosts and evil spirits. It is called the "Gusu version" in folk painting circles.
▲Tianjin Yangliuqing Paintings
The folk woodblock New Year paintings of Yangliuqing (located 20 kilometers west of Tianjin) with a history of 600 years were produced in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. At that time, there was a folk who was good at carving. Artists took refuge in Yangliuqing Town. During the holidays, they carved pictures of door gods and kitchen gods for sale, and people in the town rushed to imitate them. During the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, the Grand Canal was reopened, and exquisite paper and watercolors from the south were transported to Yangliuqing, which promoted the development of painting art here. Yangliuqing paintings were most popular from the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns of the Qing Dynasty to the early Guangxu period. There are thousands of paintings (pink books) painted by Yangliuqing. By the time of its heyday in the mid-Qing Dynasty, Dai Lianzeng's painting shop in Yangliuqing Town produced 2,000 finished products a year, with 500 pieces each, totaling one million pieces. At that time, the whole town of Yangliuqing, together with more than 30 nearby villages, was a veritable hometown of painting as "every household knew how to dot dye and every household was good at painting". Painting shops were lined up in rows, with paintings hung high in the shops. Businessmen from all over the country came in an endless stream. After the Second Opium War, Yangliuqing painting declined. In 1926, Huo Yutang, the fifth descendant of the Huo School, founded the largest "Yuchenghao" painting studio in Yangliuqing Town, and Yangliuqing painting gradually began to recover. After liberation, Premier Zhou Enlai personally inspected and sent the urgently needed garcinia raw materials to the painting village. During the "Cultural Revolution", Yangliuqing paintings were changed to offset printing, and the traditional craft was on the verge of extinction.
Huo Qingyou (son of Huo Yutang), the sixth generation descendant of the Huo School of Yangliuqing Painting in Tianjin, has inherited his father's ambition since the 1980s and spent nearly thirty years painstakingly studying outlining, stereotypes and brush painting. Mounting and other traditional techniques, he has mastered the complete set of Yangliuqing painting techniques, and has become the only Yangliuqing painting artist in Tianjin who can do the "pentathlon" of hooking, engraving, brushing, painting and mounting, reviving the almost extinct hand-painted woodblock paintings of Yangliuqing . Today, the "Yuchenghao" painting village has been built into a family museum and a cultural attraction attracting Chinese and foreign tourists.
Yangliuqing paintings inherit the painting traditions of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, absorb the forms of woodblock prints, arts and crafts, and drama stages of the Ming Dynasty, and adopt a method of combining woodblock overprinting and hand-painted painting. When making, the pictures are first carved with woodblocks. Line pattern is then printed on it with ink, and after two or three times of monochrome printing, it is filled in with colored pens. It has the flavor of block and wood, as well as the colorful and craftsmanship of hand-painting. Therefore, the folk art has a strong charm and is full of Chinese style. Yangliuqing paintings have created a unique style that is bright, lively, joyful and auspicious, and rich in touching themes. In the history of Chinese printmaking, Yangliuqing paintings and the famous Suzhou Taohuawu New Year paintings in the south are known as "Southern Peach and North Willow".
Yangliuqing paintings express the people's beautiful emotions and wishes through various techniques such as allegory and realism, and are especially characterized by themes that directly reflect current affairs, customs and historical stories of various periods. For example, in the New Year painting "Sustainable Years After Years", the doll in the picture has a "child-like face and a Buddha body, playing in a martial arts posture", holding a carp in his arms, and holding a lotus in his hand. The homophony of the doll symbolizes a prosperous life. It has become a classic in New Year paintings and is widely circulated. Yangliuqing's paintings draw on a wide range of subjects, such as historical stories, myths and legends, opera characters, secular customs, landscapes, flowers and birds, etc., especially those subjects that are closely related to people's lives, as well as subjects with current news nature, etc., which are not only rich in artistic appreciation , and has precious historical data research value.
The fine tradition of combining realism and romanticism represented by these outstanding works has formed the mainstream of Yangliuqing painting art and continues to develop to this day. The artistic characteristics of Yangliuqing paintings are multifaceted, and the conditions that form their artistic characteristics are also multifaceted. The most obvious one is in the production. The production process of Yangliuqing paintings is roughly as follows: creation, plate division, engraving, overprinting, painting, and mounting. The preliminary process is roughly the same as that of other woodblock New Year pictures. They are all based on the engraving and overprinting of the paintings; however, the post-production of Yangliuqing's paintings takes a lot of time in hand-painting, cleverly integrating the knife skills of the prints with the brushstrokes and tones of the paintings, so that the two arts complement each other. . Moreover, due to the different expression techniques of the painters, the same Yangliuqing painting blank (a semi-finished product of ink lines or plates without color painting). It can be divided into "fine work" that is meticulous and detailed, and "rough work" that is bold and rough. The artistic styles are completely different, and each has its own unique artistic value.
▲Yangjiabu, Weifang, Shandong
The woodblock New Year paintings in Yangjiabu, Weifang, Shandong, emerged in the Ming Dynasty. They are all made by hand and in traditional ways. In the early stages of development, they were influenced by Yangliuqing paintings. In the Qing Dynasty, At its peak, Yangjiabu once had "hundreds of painting shops with over a thousand types of paintings and tens of thousands of paintings", and its products were distributed all over the country. Among them, Dong Dashun Painting Store, the largest, has more than 300 sets of painting plates and produces more than one million paintings annually. Yangjiabu New Year paintings have a wide range of genres, rich imagination, heavy use of primary colors, rough lines and simple style.
Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures, together with Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Taohuawu in Suzhou, are known as the three major woodblock New Year pictures in China. They began in the Ming Dynasty and flourished in the Qing Dynasty. They emphasize celebration, rich colors and practicality, and mostly reflect ideals, customs and In daily life, the composition is complete and well-proportioned, the shape is strong and simple, and the lines are concise and smooth. According to the actual needs of farmers to decorate their living environment, there are mainly door paintings, house door paintings, blessing lanterns, beauty strips, standing boys, crawling boys, moonlights, etc., which have a strong folk flavor, local flavor and festive atmosphere.
Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures have a wide range of themes and colorful expressions, including statues of gods, door gods, beauty strips, golden boys, landscapes and flowers and birds, dramatic characters, myths and legends, etc. They also reflect folk life, criticism and criticism. The theme of Yangjiabu New Year paintings is the result of the current times, but happiness and auspiciousness are the theme. Such words as good luck, happy New Year, good fortune, wealth and splendor, more than every year, peace and equality, like blessings from relatives and greetings from friends, constitute the characteristics of farmers' New Year's peace and joy, and their wish for wealth and peace. "Skilled painters of agriculture, industry and commerce, depicting the God of Wealth and Bodhisattva, capturing all the major events in the world, taking into account what is heard in the lanes, not distinguishing the customs of the north and the south, and also painting anecdotes from ancient and modern times." The main content of Yangjiabu New Year pictures includes six major categories, namely, those related to customs such as celebrating the New Year, getting married, and busy farming; those that bring good fortune every year, such as making a house full of goldfish; those that attract good luck and ward off evil spirits such as the door god, the god of wealth, the longevity star, and the Kitchen King; those that attract good luck and ward off evil spirits, such as Bao Gong's appointment and three visits to the thatched cottage Legends and allusions, such as "Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea", entertainment and satire such as boxing and performing arts, official promotion pictures, and auspicious animals, birds, flowers and landscapes such as Three Yang Kaitai, Kaishi Chicken, Four Seasons Flowers and Birds, etc.
The production technology of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is also unique. The artist first uses willow charcoal strips and incense ash to draw, which is called "decay draft". Based on the decay draft, he then completes the main draft, traces the line draft, and pastes it on the pear wood board for engraving, and then carves the line version and the color version respectively. After that, it goes through color mixing, paper clamping, plate changing, processing of color run-off, etc., and then manual printing. After the New Year pictures are printed, various colors must be added by hand for simple drawings to make the New Year pictures appear natural and vivid.
The production of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is divided into several processes including painting, engraving, printing, and mounting. Each process is extremely precise and precise. The method is to first outline the drawing with black lines, paste it on the planed pear or tang board, and carve out the main line version. After the main line draft is printed, different colors are separated, color plates are carved, color printing is performed, and finally the plates are revised and framed.
When it was prosperous, as soon as autumn entered, art dealers from all walks of life gathered in Yangjiabu. In the evening, both sides of the street are decorated with lights and New Year pictures are hung all over the streets. More than 5,000 businessmen come to buy paintings every year. At that time, people were selling paintings and singing short verses. The most popular lyrics were: "As soon as I came to Su Dongpo, I sat down and asked Xiao He. It's not that I don't give credit, but it's too verbose to ask for an account now. Credit is like a sworn bond, and asking for an account is like asking Zhuge. ."
The woodblock New Year paintings born and raised in Yangjiabu have gradually entered the palace of elegant art. During the Spring Festival of 1983, the National Art Museum of China exhibited Yangjiabu New Year paintings. In the same year, Yangjiabu New Year paintings were toured in nine countries in America, Europe and Africa. In 1987, folk artist Yang Fuyuan was invited to Singapore to perform painting, carving and printing of woodblock New Year pictures. By the 1990s, a group of Yangjiabu New Year painting artists went to Brazil, Japan and other countries to give live performances, which were well received. In 2002, the 76-year-old New Year painting folk artist Yang Luoshu, the authentic descendant of the 200-year-old "Tongshunde" painting shop, was awarded the honorary title of "Folk Arts and Crafts Master" by UNESCO. Yang Luoshu began to create woodblock prints at the age of 18. His "Water Margin", "Pictures of the Emperor", "Journey to the West", etc. all have wonderful compositions, fine carvings, lifelike textures, and rich local flavor, which are deeply loved by people. Today, Yangjiabu, a small village with only 310 households and a population of 1,150, produces more than 20 million woodblock New Year paintings every year, which are exported to all parts of the country and more than 100 countries and regions around the world. Yangjiabu has become an important stop on the thousand-mile folk tourism route in Weifang, Shandong.
Here, people can appreciate more than 100 sets of excellent New Year pictures, witness various New Year picture production tools and original versions since the Ming Dynasty, and watch the mysterious New Year picture production process live.
▲Sichuan Mianzhu New Year Pictures
Mianzhu New Year Pictures are named after being produced in Mianzhu County, Sichuan Province, the hometown of bamboo and paper. Mianzhu New Year paintings have a long history. They originated in the Northern Song Dynasty and entered a prosperous period in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. During the Qianlong and Jiaqing years, there were more than 300 large and small New Year painting workshops in Mianzhu County, with more than 1,000 New Year painting professionals, and an annual output of more than 12 million New Year paintings. In addition to being sold to the two lakes, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan, the products were also exported to India. , Japan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Hong Kong and Macao and other countries and regions. In early 2004, Chen Qiang, the grandson of Chen Xingcai, a veteran Mianzhu New Year painting artist, displayed his recently created innovative New Year painting "Squeezing the Golden Gate God".
Mianzhu New Year pictures are famous for their colorful paintings and have strong national characteristics and distinctive local characteristics. The composition of Mianzhu New Year pictures emphasizes symmetry, completeness, fullness, clear priorities, and unity of diversity; contrasting techniques are used in color, and the colors are simple, gorgeous, strong and bright, forming a prosperous and enthusiastic artistic effect; lines emphasize refinement, smoothness, and a combination of hardness and softness. , dense and dense, with a strong sense of rhythm; and exaggerated, deformed, symbolic, and allegorical shapes have a more humorous and lively effect.
The content of Mianzhu New Year pictures is extremely wide-ranging, including historical heroes such as Kong Ming and Zhang Fei, wonderful scenes from novels and operas, statues of warrior gods, animals, flowers and fruits, etc. The most interesting among them are folk legends such as "A Mouse Marries a Girl", "Three Monkeys Scalding a Pig", "A Dog Bites the God of Wealth", and "The Official Steals the Pot".
Mianzhu New Year pictures are divided into two categories: red goods and black goods. Red goods refer to painted New Year pictures, including door paintings, fighting squares and painted strips. Among them, there are various techniques for making door paintings: fine work includes "Ming Zhan Ming Hang", "Sealing Gold", "Hooking Gold" and "Flower Gold"; rough work includes "Chang Xing", "Ink Painting" and "Water Filling Foot". Painting strips are divided into nave, strip screen, horizontal push, single strip, etc., and are used for posting in halls, living rooms, corridors, livestock pens, etc. Door paintings come in big, two, three and other sizes and are used to stick on the main door, hall door, room door and kitchen door. Black goods refer to woodblock rubbings printed with smoked ink or cinnabar. They are mostly landscapes, flowers and birds, statues of gods and calligraphy and paintings of famous people. Most of them are in the central hall and strip screens.
Other famous New Year pictures
▲Zhuxian Town Woodblock New Year Pictures
Zhuxian Town Woodblock New Year Pictures have a long history and can be called a pearl in the treasure house of Chinese folk art. During the Northern Song Dynasty, it became a custom to post door gods on every household during the New Year and festivals, especially the Spring Festival, to pray for a long life, good luck, wealth, and to suppress evil and demons. Later, the Northern Song Dynasty declined and perished, and Kai Gua experienced several wars, so woodblock New Year paintings declined. In the Ming Dynasty, although Kaifeng New Year paintings were revived, they were gradually transferred to Zhuxian Town. Floods occurred in the late Ming Dynasty, Kaifeng was submerged, and all industries were destroyed. Zhuxian Town became the center of woodblock New Year paintings. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were more than 300 woodblock New Year painting workshops in Zhuxian Town. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were more than 70 workshops, among which "Wantong", "Tianxingde", "Deshengchang" and "Tianyide" were the most popular. famous. His works sold well all over the country, so the New Year pictures in Kaifeng area were collectively called "Zhuxian Town Woodblock New Year Pictures", which had a profound influence. Zhuxian Town is 10 kilometers south of Kaifeng City, Henan Province. Although it is a small town, it was ranked as one of the four ancient towns in China in ancient times. Especially in the late Northern Song Dynasty, Yue Fei led his army to defeat the Jin soldiers here, and Zhuxian Town is even more well-known to the Chinese people. In order to commemorate the achievements of Yue Jiajun, a large-scale Yue Throne was built in Zhuxian Town. Today, the Zhuxian Town Woodblock New Year Painting Society is located in this ancient temple.
The woodblock New Year pictures in Zhuxian Town are mainly divided into two types: negative engraving and positive engraving. There are two forms of black and white painting and color painting. They use hand-made watermarks. There are more than 2,000 forms including civil and military door gods, pictures of gods, plays and hanging notes. The Zhuxian Town woodblock New Year paintings have five major characteristics: first, rough lines with alternating thick and thin; second, exaggerated images, with big heads and small bodies; third, full composition, left and right symmetry; fourth, bright colors and strong contrast; fifth, many door gods and divine codes. Serious and dignified. The New Year pictures in Zhuxian Town can be divided into two categories. One type is pictures of gods, such as Kitchen God, God of Heaven and Earth, etc., and the other type is door gods. The most common woodblock New Year pictures in Zhuxian Town are door gods. Among the door gods, Qin Qiong, The two generals Yuchi Jingde were the main ones. In those large and small door god paintings, the two generals are either dressed differently or in different shapes: walking down with whip, riding with whip, turning back with whip, hugging whip, vertical knife, robe, etc., no less than 20 styles. In addition, there are various civil and military door gods. Wenmen gods include Five Sons, Nine Lotus Lanterns, Fortune, Luxury and Longevity, etc.; Wumen gods are often loyal ministers and heroes in operas. Door gods with different contents are often posted on the door of different people: the door of married children's room is posted with the words "Heaven sends a child", "continuous birth of a precious son", "sanniang teaches a child"; the door of a middle-aged person's room is posted with the words "increase official position and salary", "Bubu Lian Sheng"; the door of the elderly's room has stickers such as "Songs and Cranes Prolong Years" and "Longevity Star"; the doors of children's rooms have stickers such as "Five Sons Win the First Prize" and "Bangs Playing with Golden Toad", etc.
The woodblock New Year paintings in Zhuxian Town not only have high art collection value, but also have great ornamental value. Many celebrities have collected the woodblock New Year paintings in Zhuxian Town, and Mr. Lu Xun gave them high praise. : "The woodblock New Year pictures in Zhuxian Town are very good. The lines of the carvings are thick and strong. They are different from those in other places and are not delicately carved. These woodcarvings are very simple, without any makeup, and the characters are not flattering. The colors are strong and have a local flavor. It has the unique characteristics of northern woodblock New Year pictures. "This is a good summary of the artistic characteristics of Zhuxian Town's woodblock New Year pictures.
Now Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall also collects 26 Zhuxian Town New Year paintings collected by Lu Xun.
▲Wuqiang New Year Pictures
Wuqiang New Year Pictures are folk woodblock New Year pictures popular in North China. They are named after they are mainly produced in Wuqiang County, Hebei Province, and are known as the "Hometown of New Year Pictures" say. Wuqiang New Year pictures are folk and local art developed under the influence of primitive farming methods, Buddhist ideas, traditional concepts and ancient national habits. It is a woodblock print made by color overprinting through three processes of painting, engraving and printing. Wuqiang New Year paintings originated before the Yuan Dynasty, took shape in the early Ming Dynasty, and entered their heyday during the Kangxi to Jiaqing years of the Qing Dynasty (1662 to 1820 AD). Until the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, there were still 144 painting shops with certified trade names in Nanguan, Wuqiang County. There were a total of 1,587 private workshops in the 68 surrounding villages engaged in the production and sales of paintings, with thousands of employees. , there were more than 180 wholesale stores opened in other places, with the highest annual sales volume reaching 100 million pairs, marketing to most of China at that time.
Wuqiang New Year pictures have a wide range of themes and forms, with a strong local flavor; the works have full compositions, prominent themes, compact structures, rough lines, and are painted in black, red, green, yellow, purple, pink and other colors , bright contrast, very decorative. There are door paintings, window paintings, lamp paintings, fighting squares, tribute papers, nave paintings, kang surround paintings, ceiling paintings, hoarding paintings, couplets, strip screens, etc. Even the cowsheds and stables have specially posted New Year paintings. Some of the carving techniques are fine, and some are alternately thick and thin. They are especially good at the bold, rough and natural carving techniques. They mainly use positive carvings, and some also use negative carvings. They use black and white contrast to show the taste of the knife, the wood, and the emotion of the pen. It is designed to create a unique, simple and childish style. The main themes include dramas and stories, customs and fashions, festive meanings, dolls and beauties, flowers and landscapes, etc. Representative works include "Walking in the Snow in Search of Plum Blossoms", "Sanniang Teaching Her Son", "Zhaozhou Stone Bridge", etc.
With the strong support of the state, the Wuqiang New Year painting industry has achieved considerable development, and the Wuqiang New Year Painting Society was established; in 1985, with the approval of the Hebei Provincial Cultural Relics Department, this prestigious "Hometown of Chinese Woodblock New Year Paintings" "The first special New Year painting museum in my country - Wuqiang New Year Painting Museum was established. In 1992 and 1994, two "China Wuqiang New Year Painting Art Festival" were held. In December 1993, the Ministry of Culture officially named Wuqiang as the "Hometown of Folk Woodblock New Year Paintings" in the country.
▲Foshan New Year Pictures
Folk woodblock New Year pictures popular in South China. Produced in Foshan Town, Guangdong Province (now Foshan City). It began in the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty and flourished in the Qianlong and Jiajing years of the Qing Dynasty. Foshan New Year pictures are divided into three categories: original paintings, wood seals, and wood seal meticulous paintings, including door paintings and statue paintings. The themes include various gods, historical figures, opera stories, etc. It is characterized by strong, rough, concise lines, and the interest of woodcuts. Most of the paintings use colors such as red, orange, yellow, and green. Some of them also absorb the characteristics of local copper-lined paper-cutting art. They add gold and silver patterns on the armor robes and belts of the characters in the paintings, making the statues resplendent. This strong The decorative style can be said to be a feature of Foshan New Year paintings.
▲Fengxiang Wooden New Year Pictures
Offset New Year pictures posted in front of the house of Tai Zengke, a villager in Nanxiao Village, Fengxiang, Shaanxi Province. Tai Zengke, who had been engaged in making wooden New Year pictures, has now given up this craft. Fengxiang's wood-block New Year pictures have been loved by people in northwest China for many years. However, in recent years, the wood-block New Year pictures have been impacted by offset-printed New Year pictures, and the market has been extremely sluggish. Nowadays, only Tai Liping and Wang Huifang are the only ones engaged in printmaking in Fengxiang County, and there are still no successors. The printmaking technology is facing loss.
▲Dongfengtai woodblock New Year paintings
The art of woodblock New Year paintings in Dongfengtai, Tianjin, once had a glorious history and once enjoyed as high a reputation as Yangliuqing paintings in western Jinxi. However, due to lack of attention, the physical objects such as painting plates and finished products have disappeared and are no longer easily seen today. Tianjin Fengtai Town is located at the junction of Ninghe, Baodi, Fengrun and Yutian, with convenient transportation and a large gathering of former merchants. It is known as the "No. 1 Town in Jingdong". To distinguish it from Fengtai in Beijing, it is called Dongfengtai. Dongfengtai New Year paintings have a long history. When they became popular, they can be traced back to the middle of the Qing Dynasty. There was a prosperous scene of "every household was dyed and every household was painted". At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, the town had more than 10 famous painting shops and 13 large-scale dyeing workshops. It was one of the largest distribution centers for Jidong New Year paintings. Although Dongfengtai New Year paintings inherit the characteristics of Yangliuqing paintings, they are also influenced by the folk customs of Northeast China and Jidong, making them unique. In comparison, the use of colors is more vivid, and the pictures are more rough and exaggerated. In addition, the formats are also unique. Some boldly use auspicious characters and do not hesitate to occupy the main body of the picture; some are window format pictures, with more than 10 panels spliced ??and overprinted to form a seamless whole; some reproduce dramatic plots and can be framed. Made into 16-frame screen, etc. On the occasion of the Chinese New Year in 2004, Tianjin folk cultural and historical workers accidentally discovered a batch of Dongfengtai woodblock New Year paintings from nearly a century ago in the home of a descendant of an old workshop in Fengtai Town, Ninghe, Tianjin. These paintings for the elderly with strong visual impact have a wide range of contents, including blessings from heavenly officials, door gods, nine phoenixes rising to the sun, pictures of beauties, and boys giving money, etc.