Yangjiabu Woodblock New Year Pictures

Yangjiabu Village of Weifang City, Shandong Province, is one of the three largest woodblock New Year pictures producing places in China. The Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures emerged in the early Ming dynasty and flourished during the Qianjia period of the Qing dynasty, with a history of more than 600 years.

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures are basically made by process printing. The making can be roughly divided into four processes, including: picture creation, wood block engraving, process printing, and baking & rouging. Firstly, is the picture creation, which requires the pictures are "good-looking and story-telling", and the character shape is usually "big head with small body, clear eyes and eyebrows, pretty and handsome face". Secondly, is the woodblock engraving. The pear wood is glued into blanks of the sizes required and then flattened into woodblocks. The picture sketches are drawn on papers with a brush and then they are attached to the woodblocks for engraving. Thirdly, is the process printing. As many colors as there are on a New Year picture, as many woodblocks they are used to print with different paints. Fourthly, is baking and rouging, generally it is to rouge the pictures by a big sheep hair brush with the rose red color mixed with appropriate amount of water.

Yangjiabu Woodblock New Year pictures are divided according to the themes into: praying for good fortune, welcoming the auspiciousness, avoiding the evil spirits, and protecting safety and peace; happiness, joy, auspiciousness and satisfaction; folk life, local customs, production, and labor; novels, dramas, myths and legends; landscape, flowers, lucky birds and auspicious beasts; current affairs, humor, recreation and entertainment. According to the posted positions, they are divided into various categories such as door god pictures, bedroom wall pictures, curtain pictures, central scroll pictures, screen pictures, etc. By using the techniques of implied meanings, symbols, and homophony, as well as the method of integrating poems with drawings, Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures not only meet the needs of people's New Year wish for praying for good luck, chasing away the evil, welcoming good fortune, and paying respect and sacrifice to the Gods and ancestors, but also have great artistic and aesthetic value, which is in harmony with the etiquette and folk custom of the Chinese New Year.