Why Mianzhu Woodblock New Year Pictures Can Enter Intangible Heritage?

Mianzhu City, located in the northwest edge of Sichuan Basin, is rich in bamboo, and the most famous Mianzhu is a good material for paper making. Mianzhu woodblock New Year pictures are mainly distributed in Jiannan Town, Gongxing Town, Qingdao Town, New Town and Xiaode Town in the north of Mianzhu City. ?

Mianzhu Woodblock New Year Pictures

The middle section of Longmen Mountain in Mianzhu is connected with the northern part of Chengdu Plain. Chengdu has been the center of woodcut printing in China since the Tang Dynasty, and Mianzhu was also influenced by it. It is said that there were woodcut New Year pictures in Song Dynasty. According to oral data, during the reign of Ganjia in Qing Dynasty, Mianzhu had more than 900 employees and more than 300 workshops, with an annual output of more than 2 million New Year pictures, including door paintings, fighting squares, screen halls, miscellaneous strips, rubbings and cases, which were exported to Yunnan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Qinghai-Tibet, Hubei, Hunan and other provinces and Sichuan Province. In addition to the traditional door-god paintings, the themes of Mianzhu woodblock New Year pictures also involve opera stories, landscape flowers and birds, landscape documentary, auspicious patterns and so on. Mianzhu New Year pictures have a professional division of labor, and the urban areas focus on rubbings, essays, and fighting cases, and also cover door paintings; Qingdao township emphasizes colored water robes; Zundao Township emphasizes beauty, puppet show, and so on. When Mianzhu woodblock New Year pictures flourished, a guild organization "Fuxi Club" spontaneously commented on New Year pictures. At the beginning of the 20th century, Mianzhu woodblock New Year pictures began to decline, and then they became increasingly depressed, so many people went out of business. ?

Mianzhu Woodblock New Year Pictures

Mianzhu woodblock New Year pictures are closely related to local customs, and there are many rules that can't be violated just by pasting them. Various images in paintings also have different symbols and explanations, which are reflected or presented in various folk ceremonies together with the images. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Mianzhu woodcut New Year pictures appeared a lot of traditional Chinese opera themes besides the themes of gods and buddhas. Mianzhu painter drew New Year pictures according to Sichuan Opera, and created works such as White Dogs Fighting for Phoenix and Five Children Telling Mother. Stylistically, Mianzhu woodcut New Year pictures can be divided into "red goods" and "black goods", in which "red goods" refer to painted New Year pictures and "black goods" refer to woodcut rubbings printed with cigarette ink or cinnabar. ?

The production of Mianzhu woodcut New Year pictures includes drawing, engraving, inking, coloring and covering flowers. One of its artistic characteristics is hand-painting, and the same version has different effects because of different hand-painting; The second is symmetrical composition; Third, the use of color tone and chroma contrast, especially the use of gold (such as gold dipping, gold piling and gold pasting). But in comparison, the most distinctive feature is "full of water" (referring to a style painted with residual pigments)

The state attaches great importance to the protection of intangible cultural heritage. In 2006, Mianzhu Woodblock New Year Pictures were approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. This is conducive to the spread of traditional culture.