Posting nianhua is an indispensable part of Lunar New Year traditions for Chinese families, particularly in the rural areas. People glue pictures on doors, windows and even stoves to pray for a good harvest, safety and fortune in the coming year.

Residents of Zhuxian Town traditionally produce all kinds of nianhua. The town, which is known as the cradle of woodcut prints, boasts a long history, compared with the other three major nianhua producers in the country - Yangliuqing in North China's Tianjin Municipality, Wuqiang in North China's Hebei Province and Weifang in East China's Shandong Province.

Its works feature a strong folk style and local characteristics: bright colours, exaggerated images and simple but clean lines.

The woodcut pictures of Zhuxian Town called menshen, "the gods of the door," date back as far as the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).

It is said that Li Shimin, founder of the Tang Dynasty, was often annoyed by ghosts in his dreams. To exorcise those ghosts, the emperor ordered two of his generals, Qin Qiong and Yuchi Jingde, to guard the door of his bedroom all night.

As it was impossible for the two generals to stand guard every night, the emperor asked artists to paste their portraits on the door - thus creating "the gods of the door." Since then, "the gods of the door" have become the major subject of woodcut pictures in Zhuxian Town.

Today, nianhua is still one of the biggest businesses in town which is home to many folk and woodcut artists.

Zhang Tingxu, for example, began plate engraving with his father in the 1960s. Each year he and his family produce about 100,000 Spring Festival pictures from October to the festival eve.

The work consists of several steps: drawing and tracing, block engraving, printing and colouring. The finished pictures therefore have the features of both woodcut prints and Chinese paintings.

The Zhangs are all good at nianhua production, from drawing to colouring. Zhang Tingxu's wife, Wang Zhenmei, is particularly talented at colouring and can produce nine clean colours in the one picture. The most commonly-used colours are blue, yellow and red.

The woodcut pictures made by the Zhangs stand out because of their primitive but lively colour, created from an age-old formula.

The paint is made and crushed from a traditional Chinese herbal medicine. Turpentine mixed with water is fermented and ground with a stone mill to make black pigment. Flowers of pagoda trees mixed with alum are steamed in a pot to make yellow pigment. Blue pigment comes from sunflower seeds.

The Spring Festival pictures painted with handmade pigments keep fresh and bright and never fade, according to the folk artists in Zhuxian Town.

(China Daily January 24, 2003)