Nianhua and the Start of China’s New Year’s Celebrations
The festive season has passed, and January has landed. Resolutions have been made and broken within the time it takes to drink one glass. You can guess which resolution hasn’t stuck with me. While trying to distract myself form the resolution, I found myself in Bristol’s central museum. On the 1st floor walkway over the entrance lobby, you can find some covered Chinese artwork, fine and bright line work detailing wooden blocks. A traditional new year’s painting, the Chinese way.
We often think of new years as static, forgetting that there are multiple calendars. For both Britain and China, new year’s, in the British sense, is celebrated much the same. Resolutions, drinks, fireworks, the lot. However, between the 21st of January and 20th of February, the Chinese Lunar new year occurs, or Yuandan (元旦).
This is China’s traditional new year’s celebration. A part of this is, of course, paintings, known as nianhua (年画), a tradition, among many others in China, dating back to the Tang dynasty (Kochetkova, 2020; Wan et al, 2019). For the Lunar new year, many forms of cultural artistry exist. For new year’s, it is customary to print artwork on woodblocks, known as woodblock paintings. An art form that started during the Han dynasty and recognised as a formal art during the Song period (Chinadaily, 2022). And, in 1949, a shift in art culture, starting with New Year’s art and woodblock prints, was encouraged by The People’s Daily (Tang, 2015). This new shift in cultural artistic direction helped establish China’s new status within the folklore and millennia old traditions of China’s populations mind. It is with this that we can see the power art has in China’s culture and look at new year’s art knowing its great importance.
Nianhua traditionally encapsulates four major themes, the immortal and auspicious, the secular life, beauty and children, and epics and traditional tales (Chinadaily, 2022). Each theme is associated with a particular function and subdivided into further function based on the subject within the theme. There is, for instance, the Chinese door god, Zhongkui (鍾馗). Known as the Demon Hunter and King of Ghosts, Zhongkui was an excellent scholar and military strategist who was to be awarded a title by the then emperor Tang Xuanzong (唐玄宗), who, at the unsightly appearance of Zhongkui, stripped him of any and all titles. Distraught, Zhongkui, threw himself at the imperial doors with such force and repetition his skull fractured. In death, he vowed to protect the emperor and dispel any evil spirits that cross his path at a chance for redemption (Pyǒng-mo, 2000; Hamilton, 2021). After these events, the emperor had a nightmare where a demon pursued him. Felled by an even greater demon, the emperor asked who this saviour might be, they replied “I am Zhongkui…I will destroy all the evil spirits for you 1 ” (Pyǒng-mo, 2000). This event led the emperor to order Zhongkui’s likeness to be illustrated as to dispel evil spirits, and, ironically, to be placed on doors to prevent their entry.
General folk continued this tale, printing the story’s interpretation on woodblocks and hanging them on their doors at new year’s for well wishes, burning them in the morning to return Zhongkui to heaven. Many of the other themes, differing in preference by region, follow the same concept and actions, which highlights the sort of time new year’s is in China (Chinadaily, 2022). A time to wish others well, with health, wealth, and career. To wish the future well and, as the next article will go over with the lantern festival, remember the past. A time to move forward, but also a time to appreciate what has already been.
1 Paraphrased from: “I am Zhongkui, who committed suicide for not having passed the military service examination. Your Majesty, I swear that I will destroy all the evil spirits for you”
By Nick Mellish