Lotus and carp are often painted in New Year pictures. What's the point?

New Year picture is a kind of Chinese painting, which originated from the ancient "door-god painting", is a kind of folk art in China, and is also one of the common folk handicrafts. During Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty, it was officially called New Year Pictures, which was a unique painting school in China and an art form loved by rural people in China. Mostly used for posting in the New Year, decorating the environment, with the meaning of wishing the New Year auspicious and festive, hence the name.

Traditional folk New Year pictures are mostly made of wood watermarks. The old version of New Year pictures has different names because of different frame sizes and processing methods. The whole article is called "Palace Tip", and there are three pages called "Three Talents". Many meticulous crafts are called "painting the palace tips" and "painting three talents". The colors painted with gold powder are called "Golden Palace Tip" and "Golden Tricolor". Products before June are called "green edition", and products after July and August are called "autumn edition".

New Year pictures are auspicious images of ancient China. In the long years, with the evolution of festival customs, the unique symbolic decorative art of China folk has been formed. Its origin can be traced back to the ancient concept of nature worship and belief in gods. China's early New Year pictures are closely related to two themes: exorcism and praying for good luck. In the process of praying for a bumper harvest, offering sacrifices to ancestors, exorcising evil spirits and other holiday customs, the corresponding New Year decorative arts gradually appeared.

Hanging New Year pictures during the Spring Festival is also very common in urban and rural areas. Thick black and colorful New Year pictures add a lot of prosperity and festive atmosphere to thousands of families. New Year pictures are an ancient folk art in China, which reflects people's simple customs and beliefs and places their hopes on the future. New Year pictures, like Spring Festival couplets, originated from "door gods". With the rise of block printing, the content of New Year pictures is not limited to monotonous themes such as door gods, but has become rich and colorful.

Broadly speaking, all paintings created by folk artists and carved and managed by workshops, which are characterized by describing and reflecting folk secular life, can be classified as New Year pictures. The custom of New Year pictures reflects the spiritual comfort and belief of the ancients.

Later, with the development of society, human beings' worship of nature gradually transformed into their worship and belief in social personality gods. From the earliest Fu Tao, Weisuo, Golden Rooster and Shenhu, to Shen Tu and Lei Yu, to military commanders such as Guan Yu, Zhao Yun, Weichi Gong and Qin, and immortals such as Zhong Kui, Shi Tian and Dong Fangshuo, they all had a distinct development track.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, "Customs and Righteousness Festival" said: "Therefore, county officials often decorate peaches, hang reeds and draw tigers on the door on New Year's Eve, all of which are chasing the past and protecting the fierce." Cai Yong's "Arbitrary" said: "shentu, who lives in his own house, leads ghosts when he reads, evil spirits, who hold reeds and eat tigers. Therefore, in1February, it is often removed by the first night of wax. It is to draw tea on the portal, lay the foundation and hang reeds to ward off evil spirits.