Home : China Guide : Guangdong : Foshan
Foshan Woodprint New Year Picture
It started in Yongle Period of Ming Dynasty more than five hundred years ago.
According to “Cihai”: “Foshan Woodprint New Year Picture is one of the new year
pictures in China, a famoust folkway woodprint new year picture in South China
area. As it is produced in Foshan, Guangdong, so it is called Foshan Woodprint
New Year Picture”.
 |
Foshan Woodprint New Year Picture |
Foshan woodprint new year pictures have three types, i.e. original picture, woodrint and hand printing, including door-god pictures, new year pictures, god figure pictures. The door-god pictures are very popular, with contents of “Yu Lei”, “Qin Shubao & Wei Chigong”, “Fortune & Longevity”, “Five Children Getting Government Degrees”, “Official Promotion”, “Tianji Sending Son”, “Hehe Immortals”, “Money Boy” and various god images and historic figures and opera stories etc. The hopes and ideals of the common people are expressed in extensive subjects.
For Foshan New Year Picture, the red lead color and god and silver colors are used to strengthen the picture decoration effects. Red indicates happy events and luck and the red lead is the famous local product in Foshan. The New Year pictures are over printed with colors of red, orange, yellow and green. The gold and silver patterns are decorated on the helmets and robe belts, making the god images even more splendid. The Foshan New Year pictures have bold lines, simple, vigorous, with full structure, decorative with unique local styles.
The custom of pasting New Year pictures has a long history. Before Ming Dynasty, the people usually used the stone sculpted tigers and lions at the two sides of the gate to drive evils. After occurrence of New Year pictures, people started to paste the spring festival scrolls and door pictures after the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month of lunar year, which were commonly called pasting doo-god image to drive evils and receive blesses.
Foshan door pictures production reached more than 1 million pieces in the past, which were used in the uran and rural areas. After 1966, the Foshan New Year pictures were denounced as “fuedual boind worship article” and the production was put to an end. In 1975 the production was restored, mainly for export. Nowadays, less and less city residents will paste door pictures, however this customer still exists in the subborb and the villages.
| Guangzhou Tour Packages
Page
1
2
3 |
|
|
