New Year pictures, embroideries, kites, lanterns and paper carvings are on display at an exhibition entitled "Da Su Zhi Ya" (Grassroots Grace) at the National Art Museum of China.

The exhibition, which also features folk art from the museum's collection, runs until February 15 in downtown Beijing.

Pictures of the "door god" are posted on the exhibition hall gates, while red lanterns are hung in corridors.

Folk artists from the New Year Picture Museum of Wuqiang County, north China's Hebei Province, are printing and selling dozens of kinds of traditional New Year pictures at the museum.

There are also calligraphers busy writing couplets and toy makers are absorbed sculpting wooden carriages and painting masks.

"We want visitors to get a feeling of the temple fair at Changdian area in southern Beijing, which has held during Spring Festivals for centuries, right up until the 1980s," said Yang Bingyan, the museum's deputy director.

Meanwhile 300 clay figurines from Huishan Town of Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province, are on show at the Millennium Art Museum, China Millennium Monument in Beijing.

The exhibition, designed by an American company which mainly works for exhibitions, is arranged by the Taipei-based Echo Magazine based on eight years' research on clay figurines in Huishan Town.

The show looks more impressive than many other folk art exhibitions in Beijing and runs until February 28.

The focus of the show is on works by the town's two master folk artists, Yu Xianglian and Wang Nanxian.

(China Daily February 4, 2005)