New Year Pictures

New Year pictures are one of the traditional popular art forms among the Chinese, especially those living in small towns and the countryside.

A kind of folk painting, the New Year pictures originally came from religious rituals.
Earliest art pictured the Door Deity, which guarded the home, and the Kitchen God, which came from fire worship, and these were often painted on doors at New Year.

The almanac of lunar calendar used by the Chinese was worked out in the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24). People began to hang pictures of gods on their walls, doors and items of furniture during the period to usher in good fortune and happiness. The practice became a folk custom.

In the Sui (AD 581-618) and Tang (AD 618-907) dynasties, woodblock New Year pictures emerged, along with the development of the wood-print technique. The pictures became a kind of commodity and were sold in the market.

Heavy colours were another technique which began to be used in Chinese woodblock New Year pictures during the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

During the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) the popularity of the art form declined, to resurge during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) then saw a golden age of woodblock New Year paintings.

In those days, woodblock New Year paintings workshops could be found all over the country. Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Taohuawu in Jiangsu Province, Yangjiabu in Weifang, of Shandong Province, and Mianzhu in Sichuan Province became the country's four great producers.

Various styles and techniques were developed and themes expanded from religious figures to opera figures, characters from novels, customs, landscapes, flowers, birds and animals.

A Comfortable Life in Old Siheyuan

"Four Generations under One Roof," a novel by the contemporary writer Lao She, depicts Beijingers in the 1930s and 1940s living in a siheyuan, or "four-sided enclosed courtyard." These courts are formed by inward-facing houses on four sides, closed in by walls on all four sides.

A small or medium-sized siheyuan usually has its main or only entrance gate built at the southeastern corner of the quadrangle with a screen wall just inside to prevent outsiders from peeping in.

Such a residence offers space, comfort and quiet privacy. It is also good for security as well as protection against dust and storms. Filled with plants and flowers, the court is also a sort of garden.

In feudal times, the courtyard dwellings were built according to the traditional concepts of the five elements that were believed to compose the universe, and the eight diagrams of divination. The gate was made at the southeast corner, which was the "wind" corner, and house was made to face the south with the main building on the north side which was believed to belong to "water"-- an element to prevent fire.

From their size and style one could tell whether they belonged to private individuals or the powerful and rich. The simple house of an ordinary person has only one courtyard with the main building on the north facing, across the court, the southern building with rooms of northern exposure and flanked on the sides by the buildings of eastern and western chambers. The mansion of a titled or very rich family would have two or more courtyards, one behind the other, with the main building separated from the view of the southern building by a wall with a fancy gate or by a guoting (walk-through pavilion). Behind the main building there would be a smaller house in the rear connected with the main quadrangle, small "corner courtyards."

The lord and lady of the house lived in the sunny main building and their children in the side chambers. The southern row on the opposite side, those nearest to the entrance gate, were generally used as the study, the reception room, the man servants' dwelling or for sundry purposes.

Not only residences were built this way, but ancient palaces, government offices, temples and monasteries were built basically on the pattern of the siheyuan, a common feature of traditional Chinese architecture.