Where are the four major producing areas of Chinese New Year pictures? What will be posted besides New Year pictures during the Spring Festival?

New Year pictures are a kind of Chinese paintings. It is a kind of painting unique to 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".

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" everywhere.

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. Mostly used for posting door paintings, mixed with the concepts of "Heaven Tea", "Heaven Official" and "Qin Qiong Respecting Virtue", the genre (or form) includes door paintings (single, folio) and single four-screen. There have been records about New Year pictures in the Song Dynasty, and the earliest woodcut New Year pictures seen at present are "Graceful and graceful with the DPRK" carved in the Southern Song 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.

source and course

New Year pictures originated from ancient door-god paintings and appeared as early as the Yao and Shun period. According to the Dictatorship of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were statues of Shen Tu and Lei Yu posted on the door in the Han Dynasty. The earliest existing New Year's picture is the Song version of "Graceful and graceful with the DPRK", which was painted by Wang Zhaojun, Zhao, Ban Ji and Lv Zhu, commonly known as "Simitu".

Another said: It started in the Tang Dynasty. It didn't become popular until the Song Dynasty, but the door gods were still posted, so the New Year pictures can include the door gods.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the Japanese discovered two kinds of Song Dynasty New Year pictures in Gansu: one is Simitu, both of which are court dresses with long sleeves for VIPs; The other is Kitchen God and Guan Shengdi. Both paintings are stamped with the words "Pingyang Ji Jia Diao Lang", which shows that the New Year pictures of figures have taken shape in the Song Dynasty.

Because Zhu Yuanzhang advocated posting Spring Festival couplets for the New Year, New Year pictures were particularly developed. Today, there are the most popular color overprint woodcut three-star pictures "Fu Lushou" and "God Bless the People" in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. The sculpture is quite exquisite and is still imitated by people today. There are also practical calendar paintings, such as: spring cattle, kitchen horses, mountain gods and so on; There are more historical stories, such as "my adopted son" and "Yue Fei picked the king with a gun". Cowherd and Weaver Girl, Legend of the White Snake and so on. As for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin and other classical literary masterpieces, they are also adopted as the theme of New Year pictures. From the late Ming Dynasty to Chongzhen, Tianjin Yangliuqing New Year pictures are very famous, and the picture content is getting richer and richer.

In the Qing dynasty, there were many talented people, and the theme of New Year pictures was more extensive. In addition to figures, flowers, landscapes and other works of art, there are allegorical paintings such as "A mouse married a woman" and "Wang Po scolded a chicken", as well as comic strips composed of two-part allegorical sayings, which give people a sense of humor. There are also various kinds of printing, such as wood, lithograph, offset printing, Chinese painting, watercolor painting, pattern and single-line flat painting. There are charcoal, antiques, creations and even reprints of western paintings. For example, the "Western Theater" in Gusu New Year Pictures is.

Main producing areas

The origin of New Year pictures has always been divided into two centers: Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Hanting in wei county in Shandong in the north; The south is in Taohuawu, Suzhou and Foshan, Guangdong. Their output and production have their own clear style, and the market scope is also very large. This is because, for a long time, New Year pictures have always been works of art created and loved by the people. Although the New Year pictures had already taken shape in the Song Dynasty; But it really took shape in the Ming Dynasty, and the oldest one was the product of Tianjin Yangliuqing.

Tianjin Yangliuqing New Year Pictures

Yangliuqing (formerly known as Guliukou) is a town in Sanli, west of Tianjin, located in the lower reaches of Daqing River, with pleasant scenery and convenient transportation. More than two-fifths of the residents in the town run the New Year pictures business, which has a long history of more than 300 years since it opened in Chongzhen in the late Ming Dynasty. The heyday was the first ten years of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty, and it sold more than 20 million copies every year, selling well in the northeast of North China and as far as Xinjiang in the northwest. For example, the New Year pictures printed by Qi, Dai Lianzeng and Mei in their early years have become treasures in the mainland and even rarer overseas. f

Shandong Weifang Hanting (Yangjiabu) New Year Pictures

Secondly, when it comes to Hanting New Year pictures, Hanting Town is about 40 miles northeast of wei county. However, the production of New Year pictures is not in Hanting Town, but in several small villages near Hanting, among which Yangjiabu in the west is the most famous, and there are almost more than 100 companies engaged in New Year pictures, most of which are only family sideline, and only a few of them specialize in this industry, among which Tongshuntang has the largest scale and abundant capital, and its products are not only sold in Shandong counties, but also in the great river basins in the south, northeastern provinces in the north, and so on.

Hanting New Year pictures can be divided into six categories:

The first category is the god horse, such as the door god, the god of wealth, the kitchen god and the Eight Immortals.

The second category is crop life, such as spring ploughing map, autumn harvest map and New Year's Day map.

The third category is auspicious portraits, rich and auspicious, happy life, the birth of your son.

The fourth category is the portrait of delight, such as fishing and reading, spring, summer, autumn and winter.

The fifth category is story portraits, such as Twenty-four Filial Pieties, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai.

The sixth category is drama portraits, such as Tang Priest's Buddhist scriptures and loyalty in Taoyuan. The expressions and movements of each character in the painting are described just right.

Hanting drama paintings are mostly based on the appearance on the stage, which can be divided into two types: one is to draw completely according to the form on the stage; The other is to decorate the stage, for example, soldiers ride horses, the battlefield is decorated with landscape trees, and doors and windows and furnishings can be added indoors. But the costumes of the characters are still imitating the costumes on the stage, especially the painted faces, which are also drawn in the way of acting. It is said that Hanting's opera paintings have received a large number of new manuscripts from the famous Tianjin painter Wang Shoutian, so they are as famous as Yangliuqing.

Among the above six kinds of New Year pictures, the first one is the earliest. However, neither the door keeper nor the chef can satisfy people's requirements for artistic appreciation, so the second or even the third category came out one after another. However, the paintings produced in the Hanting area seem to be very similar to those produced in Yangliuqing, except for a slight change in color.

Jiangsu Suzhou Taohuafang New Year Pictures

Thirdly, Suzhou Taohuawu New Year pictures were opened after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. At that time, together with Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Foshan in Guangdong, they were the three most famous producing areas of New Year pictures. In addition to Suzhou as its marketing center, it has been in Hunan, Hubei, Yunnan, Guizhou, Fujian and Jiangxi for several years. Among them, there is a famous painter, Wang Tieshan, whose handwriting is very elegant and bookish, especially the realistic brushwork of landscape painting to write the scenery of the West Lake, which is a must.

In addition to the pictures of Samsung and God bless the people, there are also funny pictures and common sense pictures. The former, such as Marriage of Mice, Five Ghosts' Crisis, Six Children's Crisis Tommy, Fear of Wife, etc., all contain irony. The latter are: Zodiac and Bird. , "Five-Lun Map", "Eighteen Scenes of West Lake". "Three Friends in Cold Years" and so on are enough for people to look up and appreciate. It also focuses on drama and painting, such as Butterfly Lovers, Qin Xianglian, Peacock Flying Southeast, The West Chamber, Qiu Jiang, Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. , are written by famous painters, not vulgar.

The state attaches great importance to the protection of intangible cultural heritage. On June 8, 2007, the Taohuawu Woodblock New Year Picture Museum in Jiangsu Province won the first Cultural Heritage Day Award from the Ministry of Culture.

Guangdong Foshan New Year Pictures

Finally, the New Year pictures of Foshan, Guangdong. Foshan used to be a big town in Nanhai County. The sales of New Year pictures reached its peak in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, with rural areas as the main market, including parts of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hunan and Guizhou, and as far away as Nanyang Islands. But before the Anti-Japanese War in China, it gradually declined for four reasons:

(1) Foshan's commercial status was replaced by Guangzhou;

(2) Lithographic printing has replaced the traditional ancient brown brush engraving printing method;

(3) Idol painting with strong superstitious color cannot meet the needs of the public;

(4) The rural economy is declining and the purchasing power is weak.

Sichuan Mianzhu New Year Pictures

In addition to the above two New Year pictures centers, Mianzhu City, Sichuan Province also produces New Year pictures. But it is only sold in Sichuan and parts of southwest China. The history of Mianzhu New Year pictures can be traced back to the late Ming Dynasty. Its most prosperous period was during the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, Mianzhu continued to operate New Year pictures and became a market. At its peak, there were 200 or 300 New Year picture shops and tens of thousands of New Year picture producers.

There are two reasons that may be the driving force for the development of Mianzhu New Year pictures:

First, there used to be a large number of folk painters in Mianzhu, who were recruited to work in architectural decoration, painting, temple sculpture, murals and so on. These painters all have certain painting attainments. When they return to their hometown to lead an idle life, they occasionally become producers of New Year pictures.

Second, Mianzhu's paper industry has been developed since ancient times. The printing of New Year pictures is based on local materials, with sufficient weight and extremely light cost. There is a kind of specialty powder tip paper in the county, which can keep bright colors for a long time without fading.

Because of the geographical relationship, Yangliuqing and Taohuawu's New Year pictures are more likely to absorb the influence of foreign forms; However, because Mianzhu is located in the western border, the traffic was inconvenient in the past, and local painters were rarely influenced by external factors, so their New Year pictures were more folk, rough and interesting in Gu Zhuo.

Generally speaking, woodcuts are more interesting than lithographs in the production of New Year pictures. First of all, the design of composition should take into account the psychology of the public. Those auspicious and festive wooden New Year pictures always occupy the primary position in marketing.

The second key point of art design is the artist's skill. Anything with delicate lines and proper color matching will be welcomed by the public. However, the designs of artworks are different. Even the same works of art, try to make some differences, or the posture changes slightly, or the line color changes slightly. Top grade is always the best embodiment of neatness and detail.

Woodblock New Year pictures are traditional folk art in China. But because woodcut is not easy to keep for too long, it will be carved in a few years, and once it is turned over, it will inevitably lose some spirit. At first, color was mixed with woodcut, and later it was printed in colorful stone. Although its paper quality and color are poor, it represents a simple folk art form and its price is low, so it can still meet the interests of the broad masses.

Due to the rapid development of printing technology, New Year pictures also take on a new look. It uses the old form, injects new content and selects hundreds of topics. Photocopying with colored offset plates is vivid and vivid. The New Year pictures before and after the Anti-Japanese War, called Yueka, once ruled for a period of time and were transformed from wood carvings in Yangliuqing and Diaohuawu. At that time, Zhou Muxing, who painted figures, was a giant, and his landscape paintings, fashionable beauty paintings and ladies paintings by Zheng He and Hang Huiying were all full of the flavor of the times and well known.

Orthodox New Year pictures are mostly folio, folio and quarto strips, which are colored with Daoguang paper, comparable to the popular beauty monthly cards. So offset lithography replaced woodcut art, and later offset printing was introduced. The original rural handicraft sideline will inevitably turn into urban light industry and become a color printed matter that can be copied in large quantities.

Woodboard new year pictures

origin

Yangjiabu is famous for producing woodblock paintings, similar to Yangliuqing in Tianjin. Suzhou Taohuawu is also known as the three major folk painting markets in China. Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures have a history of more than 300 years. It is said that it originated in Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty and developed quite well in Kangxi and Yongzheng period of Qing Dynasty. There are more than a dozen painting shops in the village, such as Yongsheng, Gongmao, Jisheng, Wanshun and Guangshengtai. By the time of Xianfeng and Guangxu in Qing Dynasty, it had developed into hundreds of workshops. There are more than 1000 paintings. Every family carves wood, and every family paints. Legend has it that a eunuch returned to Yangjiabu to visit relatives at the end of the Ming Dynasty and brought back a painted door statue from the palace, which the villagers liked very much. At that time, a man who was good at painting and carving skillfully copied, carved into wood blocks, colored and printed, and made the villagers attach themselves to the door gods of the palace. Since then, woodblock New Year pictures have gradually become popular in Yangjiabu.

trait

Yangjiabu New Year pictures are a wonderful flower of Weifang folk art .. for many years. It attracts the public with its unique artistic charm. It takes folk students as its theme, but it does not stick to real life and is not limited by time and space, and it highly summarizes and vividly exaggerates the content it expresses. It adopts the traditional sketching technique in China, with symmetrical and full composition, rough lines and bright colors, mainly red, green, blue and yellow, with strong contrast and prominent theme. The people in the painting are simple and generous, emitting a strong local flavor.

Yangjiabu New Year pictures have a wide range of genres. Rich imagination. The portraits of door gods such as Lei Yu, Qin Qiong and Zhong Kui, the gods among gods, reflect the farmers' hope for the protection of door gods and the happiness of their families. It reflects people's desire for health and longevity, such as "goldfish (jade) full house", "cash cow" and "cornucopia". It expresses people's desire to get rich. The "Top Ten Busy People" and "Top Ten Busy People" summarize the activities of men and women in the ten solar terms into a picture, showing the scene of farmers working hard and loving life. Some New Year pictures are also entrusted with people's efforts to reduce disasters and live and work in peace and contentment. In a word, Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures express farmers' vivid and complicated life ideals and wishes.

craftsmanship

The production of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is divided into painting, carving, printing, mounting and other processes, each of which is extremely precise and accurate. The practice is to hook out the black draft of the painting first, stick it on the planed pear wood or Tang board, and carve the main line version. After the manuscript is printed, it will be engraved in different colors, printed in color, and finally modified and mounted.

Pingyang woodblock new year pictures

Woodblock New Year pictures originated in Pingyang (ancient Linfen) in Song Dynasty were widely developed in Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. After the demise of the Song Dynasty, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty forced many printers to move to Pingyang from the south, making it the center of the printing industry, thus producing Pingyang woodblock New Year pictures. Most of Pingyang woodcuts are carved and printed by farmers with this hobby in their spare time. Woodcarving is based on local customs and legends, with flowers, birds, fish, insects and historical figures as the main contents. The picture is exaggerated and vivid, colorful and full of local flavor, reflecting the healthy, brave and romantic character of the local people. Pingyang New Year pictures have different types according to different uses. Some are hung in the bedroom, some are pasted on the doors and windows, and some are used to decorate the kitchen or dining table.

There are engraving pictures for sale at temple fairs on holidays. When ordinary people wander around, please go back to the New Year pictures of the God of Wealth and post them in the hall to pray for peace and prosperity in the coming year.

paste up Spring Festival couplets

Spring Festival couplets are also called door couplets, spring stickers, couplets, couplets and peach symbols. They depict the background of the times and express good wishes with neat, dual, concise and delicate words, which are unique literary forms in China. Every Spring Festival, no matter in urban or rural areas, every household should choose a pair of red Spring Festival couplets and stick them on the door to add festive atmosphere to the festival. This custom began in the Song Dynasty and was popular in the Ming Dynasty. By the Qing Dynasty, the ideological and artistic quality of Spring Festival couplets had been greatly improved. Liang Zhangju's monograph Poetry of Spring Festival couplets discusses the origin of couplets and the characteristics of various works.

There are many kinds of Spring Festival couplets, which can be divided into door heart, frame pair, cross string, spring strip and bucket square according to the place of use. The "door core" is attached to the center of the upper end of the door panel; The "door frame pair" is attached to the left and right door frames; "Cross-dressing" is posted on the crossbar of the door; "Spring strips" are posted in corresponding places according to different contents; "Dou Jin", also known as "door leaf", is a square diamond, often attached to furniture and screen walls.

Stick the window grilles and the word "fu" upside down.

In the folk, people also like to stick various paper-cuts on the windows-window grilles. Window grilles not only set off the festive atmosphere, but also integrate decoration, appreciation and practicality. Paper-cutting is a very popular folk art in China, which has been loved by people for thousands of years. Because it is often pasted on the window, it is also called "window grilles". With its unique generalization and exaggeration, window grilles show auspicious things and good wishes incisively and vividly, and decorate festivals with colorful colors.

While putting up Spring Festival couplets, some people have to put large and small "Fu" characters on doors, walls and lintels. Sticking the word "Fu" during the Spring Festival is a long-standing folk custom in China. The word "Fu" symbolizes good luck and wishes for a happy life and a bright future. In order to fully reflect this yearning and wish, some people simply put the word "Fu" upside down, indicating that "Fu has arrived" and "Fu has arrived". Others elaborate the word "Fu" into various patterns, such as longevity, longevity peach, carp yue longmen, abundant grains, dragons and phoenixes, and so on.