| The Yangjiabu village is thirty li northeast of Weifang City,Shangdong Province. It has been famous at home and abroad for its abundant woodcut new year pictures from ancient times to the present.Yangjiabu's woodcut new year pictures were originated in the end of the Ming Dynasty and flourished in the Qing Dynasty. It has a long history of 400 years. It is one of the three kinds of famous folk new year pictures of our country. During the reign of Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, Yangjiabu's new year pictures were at the height of splendour in the development history. It was said that Yangjiabu then had a hundred of picture shops, over a thousand of picture kinds and ten thousands of picture woodcuts, and the sales volume of new year pictures totaled as much as ten millions. Besides satisfying the needs of local people, pictures were sold far away to Jiangsu, Anhui, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, the three provinces of Northeasteen China and Nei Monggol, etc. With the various kinds, the large scale and the wide selling range, Yangjiabu's new year pictures enjoyed equal popularity with those of Yangliuqing of Tianjin and Taohuawu of Suzhou, and became one of the three major picture markers gaining considerable fame among the people in China.The contents of Yangjiabu's new year pictures are rich and varied, with the pictures of gods, door-gods, Beauty stripe, Gold Boy ,flowers and birds and landscape, dramatic figures, and fairy tales and legends, etc. At the same time there are also works reflecting the life of common people and satirizing social corrupt practices, however, jubilation and good fortune are the subjects of Yangjiabu's new year pictures, such as :"A Good Fortune as You Wish", "Happy New Year", "Congratulations on Your Making a Fortune", "wealth, Rank ,Glory and Splendour ", "A Surples for the Years Running", "Peace and Happiness" and so on, which are like congratulations of relatives and greeings of good friends; and make up the characteristics of fanners being lucky and happy and hoping wealth, rank and peace.The types of Yangjuabu's new year pictures are novel and various, from the Military Door-god on the gate, lanterns with the Chinese word "fu"(good fortune) on the screen wall, Beauty Stripe and Gold Boy on the door to central scrolls, Kitchen God and " kang " - side pictures inside the room. There are also pictures of Moonlight beside thewindow: pictures on the sides of it and those on top of it. Even the door of the cowshed and poultry pan, the cart and grain bins are also pasted particular new year pictures on. It may be said that there are new year pictures everywhere. So the courtyard of the farmer family is decked out inside and out, which looks brand -new and jubilant.Yangjuabu's new year pictures, as purely farmer's pictures along China's Huanghe River Valley, took root among the people and was brought up on the native soil. They pooled laboring people's art talents and industrious wisdom, and gathered their unsophisticated ideas and feelings and eager hopes for a happy life. For a long time, the typical art characteristis have formed; that is, in the means of artistic expression, the subjects are reflected by means of condensation, symbolism, implied meaning and romanticism. With perfect, full and well-balanced composition; with exaggerated, rough and simple moulding-making; with teres, forceful, easy and smooth line; and with gaudy colors and a striking contrast, pictures have a strong flavor of rural life, and are docarative. They fully embodies the northern farmers'rough, untrammelled, straightforward, industrious humorous, clear bout-love-and-hate disposition traits, and noble morality and values in China, who are really typical "Big Shandong Fellows. "And as a result of these, new year pictures are warmly welcome by the guests at home and abroad, experts and scholars.
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