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Yangjiabu New Year Pictures |
| CCTV.COM 2003-09-09 19:09:41 |
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Villagers of Yangjiabu, Weifang, Shandong Province began to make New Year pictures long ago. As the saying goes, “Yangjiabu came into being first. The kitchen god was born next.” It proves the long history of the block printing Yangjiabu New Year pictures.
 The production of Yangjiabu New Year pictures began during the Ming Dynasty over 400 years ago. According to the “Genealogy of the Yang Family”, the ancestors of the Yang family in Yangjiabu moved to Weixian County from Sichuan Province during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty.
“Zhu Yuanzhang became the emperor in 1368. People moved to this village from Zitong County, Sichuan Province in 1369. We went to Sichuan to investigate on four occasions. The remaining New Year pictures there are similar to those in Yangjiabu. The ancestors brought the craft to this place. During the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty, there were over 30 picture shops in Yangjiabu. This business was done all the year round. Picture shops were opened at ports, in Jinan and elsewhere. Carts carried pictures there. The business flourished in the early years of the Qianlong period,” said Yang Qixin, folk handicraftsman.
After it moved to Yangjiabu, the Yang clan merged into the folkways of Shandong with the elapse of many years. It created the unique Yangjiabu New Year pictures.
 Yangjiabu New Year pictures are a kind of colourplate woodcut pictures. The first plate finishes black outlines. Then colour plates are used one after another. Deep colours are printed first on small sections of a picture at first. Light colours are printed on large sections of the picture at last. The main colours are red, yellow, purple, green, blue and black. With their sharp eyes and nimble fingers, the handicraftsmen can print four or five colours on the same sheet of paper without the slightest error.
Yangjiabu block printing New Year pictures are characterized by local flavor, artistic exaggeration and sharp contrast of colour. Take artistic exaggeration for example. A chubby child carries a fish in his hands. His head is bigger than his body. The fish is bigger than the child. It looks very nice.
Yangjiabu New Year pictures draw materials from the life of the local people. Their motifs cover flowers, birds, mountains, rivers, characters in traditional operas and fairy tales. The composition of pictures is vigorous, the depiction is exaggerative, the lines are simple and smooth and the colours are gorgeous. The bright red, bright green and bright purple colours give prominence to the rustic flavour. The pictures highlight the bold and unconstrained character of farmers in northern China.
“The farmers have created the pictures for generations and hundreds of years.
 Such a form of art serves the farmers themselves. It has rich cultural sediments.
In the forms of art, it provides a broad space of study for our artists of plastic arts, painters and handicraftsmen. It provides much for artists to draw on,” said Lu Hong’en, a folk art expert.
Yangjiabu block printing New Year pictures have gone through different eras. Their contents have changed with the passage of the times. But jubilation, good luck, peace and happiness remain their eternal themes. Their simple, primitive, vigorous and bright－coloured style represents a sum of art assets for the public.
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Editor: Han Ling CCTV.com
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