Nian Hua, Special Painting of China, Not Only New Year Paintings Now

Nian Hua, or New year paintings, they are a unique genre of painting in China and a popular art form among Chinese people for more than 1300 years.

Nianhua is originated from ancient “door god paintings”. In the early days, there was a close connection with the themes of warding off evil and praying for blessings and welcoming good luck. Traditional folk New Year Paintings are often made with woodblock prints, while with printing technology improving, the content of Nianhua is no longer limited to themes of door gods, and become rich in style and content . After thousand of years of development, Nianhua has gradually evolved into festive decorative art, mainly posted during the New Year to decorate residences, expressing blessings for the New Year and luck and festive meanings.

It is also believed that, during Qing dynasty, Italian painter Giuseppe Castiglione brought change to Nianhua. Under his influence, Western light and dark perspective techniques were applied in the creation of Nianhua, some works even engraved words like “Fang Tai Xi Bi Yi”(means imitating western painting techniques), making Nianhua a window for the process of eastward expansion of western learning.

Themes of Nianhua

The themes of Nianhua cover a wide range, with a total of over 2000 types of paintings, making it an encyclopedia of folk life. It can be roughly divided into four aspects:

（1） Immortals and mascots

This is the most important theme of Nianhua. Immortals were the main manifestation of early works, and they hold a significant proportion even today. Mascots include auspicious animals such as lions, tigers, deer, cranes, and phoenixes, as well as flowers such as lotus and peonies, and fictional items such as money trees and treasure pots. They express the meaning of good luck and auspiciousness through metaphors, symbols, or homophones, and the wish of warding off evil, warding off disasters, and welcoming blessings and auspiciousness.

（2） Secular life

Folk artists express real life through their own observations and feelings. This type of subject matter is less common than other subjects. The themes of secular life mainly include people’s daily life and work, seasonal customs, and current events and anecdotes.

（3） Doll Beauty

This type of theme accounts for a large proportion in Nianhua, expressing people’s good wishes for harmonious marriage & getting a lovely baby soon.

（4） Stories and legends

This part is mostly based on historical events, folk stories, myths and legends, narrative novels, and traditional Chinese opera, among which the proportion of traditional Chinese opera themes is the highest. For example stories like “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, “Journey to the West”, “Water Margin”, “Dream of the Red Chamber”, “Legend of the White Snake”, “Cowherd and Weaver Girl”, etc, are very common described in Nianhua Art.

Mianzhu Nianhua

Sichuan Mianzhu Nianhua is one of the four major Nianhua paintings in China. It originated in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, formed in the Tang and Song Dynasties, prevailed in the Ming Dynasty, and flourished in the Qing Dynasty, with history of more than 1300 years.

During recent Qing Dynasty, Mianzhu Nianhua was so popular, its market can be as long as fifteen miles . Special occasions like before the Spring Festival, started from the first day of the twelfth lunar month, for a whole month, every day trade would last until midnight. Through art merchants, Mianzhu Nianhua have been widely spread to provinces like Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Yunnan, Guizhou, and exported to Vietnam, Myanmar, India, and various countries in Southeast Asia.

What’s special of Mianzhu Nianhua?

Mianzhu Nianhua not only inherits woodblock printing techniques from Tang Dynasty as other Nianhua Paintings, but also keeps the hand painting skills before the era.

Like other Chinese Nianhua paintings, the first step is to carve them into a line pattern of woodblock. However, line prints only serve as outlines in Mianzhu Nianhua paintings, without color matching. After that, they would be all hand-painted by individual painters, so every painting would presented to be in different style with the hands of different artists. The same artist drawing different frames can also create different tastes. This is one of the main characteristics that distinguishes Mianzhu Nianhua from other traditional Nianhua paintings, and it is also the charm of it.

Nianhua Painting is so popular in Mianzhu, there are thousands of all kinds of studios and countless painters here. Every house located in this region is carefully decorated with delicate Nianhua, make it interesting to walk in. There is a museum collecting all kinds of Nianhua in history too.

If you are interested, we can take you to explore the region, visit Nianhua studios and masters, learn about this unique painting art of China, practice how to make Nianhua paintings, and bring one piece back home for decoration as a witness of your beautiful journey here.