Introduction to Zibo folk art

Yangjiabu Folk Art Grand View Garden was built in May 1986. It houses a kite factory, a folk custom hall, a New Year picture hall, a kite museum, a street of ancient shops, a cultural relics hall, Chang'e's Run to the Platform, etc. Ten scenic spots. Covering an area of ??200 acres and a construction area of ??100,000 square meters, it integrates kite production, New Year picture printing and folk tourism. Its products have won the "Shandong Arts and Crafts Hundred Flowers Award", "China Folk Art Exhibition Silver Award", "China Export Commodity Expo Excellent Product Award", "International Kite Expo Gold Award" and many other awards.

The contents of the kites are auspicious and auspicious, including bird, animal, insect and fish kites, board type and hard-wing kites, string type and soft-wing kites. The 350-meter-long dragon-headed centipede made for the kite club was Known as "the best in the world". Woodblock New Year pictures are even more popular. The myths, legends, folk tales and opera characters in them are all lifelike. Having more than enough year after year, attracting wealth and bringing forth hundreds of seeds reflects the working people’s expectation, pursuit and yearning for a better life.

The Grand View Garden is dominated by kites and New Year paintings, with folk customs as the theme, and carries out folk tourism. With its unique folk customs and rich local flavor, it has attracted Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. Tourists from dozens of countries and regions travel there, receiving more than 250,000 tourists every year.

Yangjiabu Tourist Area is located on the south side of Hanting District, Weifang City, covering an area of ??10.62 square kilometers. The roads in the area extend in all directions and the geographical location is very advantageous. It is the hometown of Chinese folk culture and art and a tourist attraction with strong folk customs. It is a shining pearl on Qilu's thousands-mile folk tourism line. It has become an important window for Weifang's opening up and cultural exchanges, and a bright business card for Chinese folk tourism. .

Yangjiabu is the main producing area of ??China’s three major woodblock New Year paintings, and Yangjiabu kites are well-known both at home and abroad. The more than 500-year-old ancient Sophora japonica and New Year painting workshops bear witness to the prosperity and development, inheritance and innovation of these two sisters' artistic flowers, attracting hundreds of thousands of domestic and foreign guests every year.

Yangjiabu kites are simple, novel and beautiful. They are art treasures rich in folk art and interesting. Yangjiabu New Year paintings are even more popular, including myths and legends, folk stories, opera characters and auspicious animals. The auspicious birds are all lifelike. There are fish year after year, which attracts wealth and longevity, which reflects the working people's yearning for happiness and their pursuit and expectation for a better life. With the strong support and care from party committees at all levels, governments and all walks of life, Yangjiabu Tourist Area has made great progress.

The themes, genres, styles and production scale of Yangjiabu woodblock New Year paintings can be roughly divided into the following stages:

1. From the early years of Qianlong to the end of Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty (1736-- -1861), New Year painting shops appeared one after another in the Yangjiabu area, and the scale of production expanded rapidly. Some traditional contents continued to be enriched and developed, and new genres emerged. At the same time, they gradually formed their own unique artistic style.

According to the "Yang Family Genealogy", before Qianlong, there were several painting shops in Yangjiabu, including Gongmao, Yongsheng, Jisheng, Jixing, Guangshengtai and Wanshun. During the Qianlong period, Wansheng, Desheng, Yihe, Wanzang, etc. appeared. At this time, there were more than a dozen painting shops. After the development in the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods, by the end of Xianfeng (1861), the number of painting shops in Xiyangjiabu The number of stores has grown to about 60.

During this period, the genres and themes of Yangjiabu New Year paintings were much richer than before. As the earliest genre of "door gods", its themes include "Shen Tu Yu Lei", "Qin Qiong and Yu Chi Gong", "Zhong Kui", "Zhao Gongming and Ran Deng Taoist", etc., which have been fully developed. Due to the improvement of appreciation level and the advancement of thinking, simple portraits of gods can no longer meet the requirements, so several new genres such as "Mao Fangzi" with dolls as the theme, and "Windowside" with flowers as the theme have emerged. The "Silkworm Girl" engraved by Wansheng Painting Shop during this period is very representative. At the same time, New Year pictures in the form of independent paintings also developed. Its earliest genre is "Hengpi" (also known as kangtou painting, mold painting, grass bird painting). The representative works that have been preserved include "Ten Busy Men" and "Ten Busy Women". The representative figures of this period include Yang Fang (1806---1890) and Yang Yupu (1822---1876). Their representative works include "Bao Gong takes office", "Eighteen Arhats", "Hundred Years of Life", "Guo Ziyi Brings His Son to the Temple", etc. .

2. From the early years of Tongzhi to the end of Guangxu (1862---1908), this was the heyday of Yangjiabu woodblock New Year paintings. There are more than 100 painting shops in West Yangjiabu, more than 20 in Cangshang, more than 20 in Hanting, and 4 in East Yangjiabu. The production scale of painting shops continues to expand. For example, Dashun Painting Shop has developed into three branches: Dong Dashun, West Dashun and South Dashun. Dong Dashun was the largest workshop at the time, printing 20 cases per year and producing more than one million copies.

The production and sales of New Year paintings promote each other. During this period, each painting shop not only has relatively fixed customers, but also has relatively fixed sales areas. For example, the Dashun Painting Store in East China prints door gods specifically for the needs of the people in the Northeast, and is called the "Guandong Store". In addition, there are Juzhou Village and Yishui Village which are specially printed with "Mountain God". There is Yutaizhuang, which specializes in "Chongsha", "Mounted Screens", and "Great Beauty"; there is Xiluzhuang, which specializes in opera New Year pictures; Jiaozhou Village.

Representative figures of this period include Yang Zhonghai (1875---1937) and Liu Mingjie (1857---1911). Their representative works include "Look at You Bragging About Your Hip Bones" and "Hitting the Mother-in-Law and Transforming her into a Donkey" 》, "Rabbit asks for cigarettes, eats tortoise and drinks white wine" etc. At the same time, artist Liu Mingjie's New Year pictures such as "Bombing Japanese Ghosts" (four comic strips), "Boxers", "Red Lights", etc., profoundly exposed the crimes of imperialism in invading China. In addition, a large number of New Year pictures based on novels and romance stories have appeared, such as "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Water Margin", "Journey to the West", "The Romance of the Gods", and "The Geography of the World" and "The Picture of the Emperors of the World", etc., further opening up the expression of New Year pictures. The content has played a positive role in disseminating historical and cultural knowledge. The new style of New Year pictures during this period was "Moonlight" (also known as "Window Seat"). Most of the pictures were about children, showing the shape of a full moon, and were posted on the walls on both sides of the window. So far, the New Year picture genre has been fully developed.

After Tianjin’s Yangliuqing paintings were introduced to Wei County during the Xianfeng period, they were integrated with Yangjiabu New Year paintings during the Guangxu period. Yangliuqing paintings are half-printed and half-painted paintings. Not only are they labor-intensive and costly, they are not easy to mass-produce, and they are also not suitable for the appreciation habits of Shandong farmers. Therefore, they were first copied in the painting shops of Cangshang and Hanting, and then folk artists transformed Yangliuqing paintings. First of all, after Yang Wanzhuang created a batch of "Dagon Papers" with woodblock color separation and overprinting, the New Year pictures of "Beauty Strips", "Golden Boy", Climbing Boy and other genres also changed from half printing and half painting to all using woodblock color separation and overprinting. . Due to changes in production technology, the composition of this type of New Year pictures is more full and the colors are more vivid, and it has become an integral part of Weixian New Year pictures.

3. From the early years of the Republic of China to the founding of the People's Republic of China (1911---1948). , this was the period of decline of Yangjiabu New Year paintings. After 1922, a large number of lithographic New Year paintings and calendar New Year paintings from Shanghai, Tianjin, Qingdao and other places were imported into Shandong, which made Yangjiabu New Year paintings more popular. The output suddenly decreased. In 1938, the Japanese imperialists invaded Wei County and Hanting County and burned, killed and looted Yangjiabu many times. Almost all the local painting shops closed down, and only a few of them fled to Wei Xian City and Jinan with their original paintings. , Yantai and other places make a living by selling paintings

4. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the party and the country have attached great importance to the restoration, reform and innovation of this folk art. This is the rebirth period of Yangjiabu model New Year pictures. .

In November 1951, the famous printmaker Zhang Yangxi led a New Year painting team and worked with folk artists to create 22 New Year paintings with the content of the founding of New China and the land reform movement. In October 1952, Zhu Shiji was the leader. A 17-member work team with Yang Tongxian as the director, Yang Zongyu and Yang Lianyuan as deputy leaders went to Yangjiabu again and established the "Yangjiabu Township New Year Picture Improvement Committee" with Yang Tongxian as the director and Yang Zongyu and Yang Lianyuan as the deputy leaders. The traditional New Year pictures were inspected, the feudal superstitious content was eliminated, and the healthy New Year picture heritage was affirmed and preserved. In 1959, as a gift to the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, he created a number of good works, such as: "Listening to Uncle Volunteer Soldiers Telling Stories", "Dividends from Cooperatives", "New Five Sons Enrolled", "New Year Cow Picture" and many other good works. work. It was exhibited in Beijing in 1962 and 1964 and was well received!

After the reform and opening up, the Yangjiabu Woodblock New Year Painting Research Institute was established in 1979, specializing in the excavation, arrangement, inheritance and rescue of this folk art. Four tasks have been done: First: Rescue New Year picture materials and original copies. After ten years of turmoil, a large number of New Year picture materials and original copies were burned. Through unremitting efforts, more than 280 types of paintings and more than 200 original copies have been collected. Second: Research, inherit, and innovate New Year pictures, organize traditional materials, and edit the first and second episodes of "Selected Original Materials of Yangjiabu New Year Pictures" and "New Year Pictures Miniatures", and create "Happy Harvest" and "Four Seasons" Flowers", "Songs and Tigers" and other New Year paintings. Third: Organize exports and receive visits from foreign friends. In recent years, 160,000 pieces have been exported to Japan, the United States, France and other countries. Fourth: During the Spring Festival of 1980, joint exhibitions were held in Tianjin, Weifang and Suzhou with Tianjin Yangliuqing and Suzhou Taohuawu respectively. When it was exhibited in Beijing in 1983, Zhang Ding, president of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, saw Yangjiabu New Year pictures and wrote happily: "This precious folk art heritage should be valued by people." "In culture In terms of value, they should be treated on the same level as rare books, embroidered portraits, illustrations, etc. of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

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With the issuance of the stamps "Yangjiabu Woodblock New Year Pictures", the art of New Year pictures with a long history and far-reaching influence will be full of vitality!