China's Unique Folk Art Materials (Detailed)

New Year pictures are a kind of Chinese paintings and a unique folk art in China. The "Door God Painting", officially called New Year Painting, which began in Guangxu period of the ancient Qing Dynasty, is a unique painting genre in China and an art form loved by rural people in China. It is often used to post posts and decorate the environment during the New Year, which means auspicious and festive New Year, hence the name. Traditional folk New Year pictures are mostly made of wood watermarks. The main producing areas are Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Taohuawu in Suzhou and Weifang in Shandong. There are "Moon Brand" New Year pictures in Shanghai, as well as in Sichuan, Fujian, Shanxi, Hebei and even Zhejiang. The old version of New Year pictures has different names because of different frame sizes and processing methods. The whole painting is called "Palace Tip", three pieces of paper are called "Three Talents" and many detailed processes are called "Painting Palace Tip" and "Painting Three Talents". The colors of gold powder coating are called "Golden Palace Tip" and "Golden Tricks". Products before June are called "green edition", and products after July and August are called "autumn edition".

Traditional New Year pictures are mainly woodcut watermarks, which pursue simple style and lively atmosphere, so the lines are simple and the colors are bright. The content includes flowers and birds, fat children, golden roosters, spring cattle, myths and legends, historical stories and so on. It expresses people's longing for a bumper harvest and a happy life, and has strong national characteristics and local flavor.

The four famous "Hometowns of New Year Pictures" in China are Mianzhu New Year Pictures, Suzhou Taohuawu, Tianjin Yangliuqing and Shandong Weifang. New Year pictures made in these places are deeply loved by urban and rural people.

The appellations of New Year pictures vary greatly from place to place, such as "Draw a picture" and "Protect a picture" in Beijing, "Draw a picture" in Suzhou, "Flower Paper" in Zhejiang, "Divine Symbol" in Fujian and "Doufang" in Sichuan. Today, New Year pictures are gradually called "New Year pictures".

New Year pictures are a folk craft for Chinese people to pray for good luck and welcome the New Year, and it is also a folk art expression that carries people's yearning for a better future. Historically, people called New Year pictures "paper paintings", called "painting stickers" in the Song Dynasty and "painting" in the Qing Dynasty. Until the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, scholar Li Guangting wrote in his article: "It is a child's ear to paste New Year pictures after sweeping the house." New Year pictures got their name from this.

New Year pictures are simple in lines, bright in colors and warm and pleasant in atmosphere, such as pictures of spring cows, New Year's Eve, Jia Sui, playing with babies, family happiness, watching lanterns and fat dolls. Some take immortals, historical stories and dramatic figures as themes. Many of them are used to put up door paintings, which are mixed with the concepts of "God protects the courtyard", such as "Tiancha", "Tianguan" and "Qin Qiong respects virtue", etc. The genre (or form) includes door paintings (single picture, folio) and horizontal and vertical single picture and four screens. There have been records about New Year pictures in the Song Dynasty, and the earliest woodcut New Year pictures seen at present are the graceful appearance of the Southern Song Dynasty and the Sui Dynasty. In the middle of Qing dynasty, it was especially popular. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), New Year pictures became more popular and brought forth new ideas.

The art of New Year pictures was initiated by China, and it also reflected the history, life, beliefs and customs of China society. Every Lunar New Year, I buy two New Year pictures and stick them on the door, which is the case in almost every family. From the gate to the hall, there are all kinds of colorful New Year pictures symbolizing good fortune. The reason why the Spring Festival is full of joy and excitement is that New Year pictures have played a certain role in it. Generally speaking, rich people always like to hang birthday stars, purple stars, blessings, blessings and longevity characters in the hall. Flowers and birds, such as Zhi, Mei Lan and Zhu Ju, are naturally popular.

For thousands of years, New Year pictures are not only colorful decorations for New Year's festivals, but also carriers and tools for cultural circulation, moral education, aesthetic exchange and belief inheritance. It is also a popular reading material that can read pictures; For the New Year pictures with the color of current politics, it is still a kind of media that is deeply loved by all kinds of people. This kind of content can be regarded as an encyclopedic folk art, which contains the complete folk spirit of China.

New Year pictures are also a dictionary of regional culture, from which we can find the distinctive cultural personality of each region. These personality factors can be recognized at a glance not only in the subject matter, but also in the genre, color, lines and different flavors of the origin of each New Year picture. You can know all the people in China from the New Year pictures.