At midnight on the last day of the lunar twelfth month, deafening explosions of firecrackers blast throughout Taiwan from the highrises of Taipei and Kaohsiung to the quiet, single-street farming towns of the central island. These thundering bursts will continue well into the early hours of the morning. This is the biggest holiday of the year.
Like Christmas in the West, Chinese New Year brings families together to feast and celebrate. Instead of wrapped gifts, the Chinese give money sealed in red envelopes; instead of sending greeting cards with winter themes, they decorate their homes with inscriptions of spring; instead of hanging wreathes and lights, they decorate their doors with nien hua (年畫), New Year prints.
These prints ensure a good start for the new year. They are embellished with traditional greetings and auspicious symbols such as the character fu (福 , good fortune) or a depiction of two cherubic boys holding a coin, signifying wealth and sons. Many prints feature deities such as fierce, demon-quelling Door Gods, the Kitchen God, or the God of Wealth. The tradition of decorating the doorway and home with New Year prints continues today, but most decorations have a distinctly modern look. Some of the prints even flash gilded inscriptions promoting commercial establishments: “Compliments of Hua Nan Commercial Bank” or simply “Kodak.”
The practice of painting images of Door Gods on the doors to a home was popular as early as the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220). New Year prints came later. Although China's woodblock printing tradition is the oldest in the world, dating to before the ninth century, it was not until multicolored woodcut printing developed into a sophisticated art form after the fourteenth century that the holiday prints became widely used.
When polychromatic woodcut technology peaked in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, New Year woodblock prints reached their height of popularity. Prints from this era reveal a diversity of styles, themes, and applications. The tradition spilled over into neighboring countries, including Japan, which imported large quantities of New Year prints and adopted woodcut printing.
Author Huang Tien-heng says local woodblock prints portray the heritage of Taiwan's Han population – “We who came from Fujian were all dirt poor, all commoners. Therefore, our art was also crude.”
Unlike paintings or calligraphy, woodcut prints were inexpensive to produce in large quantities. The prints rapidly gained mass appeal, especially during the New Year season. “Woodblock prints were cheap – common people could afford them,” says print expert Huang Tsai-Iang (黃才狼), director of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. “And the prints-for instance, of the Kitchen God and the God of Wealth-were relevant to people's daily lives.”
As the tradition spread across China, different regions developed distinct styles. The New Year woodblock prints found in Taiwan reflect the homegrown style of Fujian province, where the majority of the island's Chinese population originated. Local prints depict a narrow range of traditional motifs, mostly wealth-giving gods or protective motifs such as Door Gods, the Guardian Lion with Sword, or the Eight Trigrams (arranged in an elaborate octagon and used to ward off evil).
Like Fujian prints, Taiwan's woodcut illustrations are stamped on colored paper, usually red or orange. The designs use prominent black lineation filled in with swatches of a few other colors – usually blue, white, and yellow. Local prints have neither the final painted touchups prevalent in the mainland's Shandong and Hebei provinces, nor the varied tonal gradations achieved by more sophisticated forms of multiblock printing techniques.
Museum director Huang Tsai-Iang explains why the prints became popular – “Woodblock prints were cheap – common people could afford them. And the prints, for instance, of the Kitchen god and the God of Wealth, were relevant to people's daily lives.”
Well-known woodblock print collector Huang Tien-heng (黃天橫), co-author of The Art of Traditional Chinese New Year Prints, explains that the different styles of prints tell a great deal about the lives of those who used them. “Let's face it: We who came from Fujian were all dirt poor, all commoners,” Huang says. “Therefore, our art was also crude.” Fujian's grassroots printing style was overshadowed by famous mainland printing centers in Tianjin and Suzhou. New Year prints from these cities boasted colorful and intricate designs. Most were printed on white paper and depicted a vast array of themes ranging from complex landscape compositions to pavilion scenes of beautiful ladies playing lutes or games of chess. Prints from Fujian were simpler and coarser.
New Year prints were first shipped across the Taiwan Straits from Quanzhou, Fujian province, in the late eighteenth century. In Taiwan, the paper mills along Tainan's Rice Street produced the island's first New Year prints by replicating Quanzhou originals. Tainan's foremost woodblock artist and historian Pan Yuan-shih (潘元石) recalls being awed by the print shops fifty years ago. “As a young boy I would pass by Rice Street every day,” Pan says. “I would watch the wood-cut printers working away. I would just stand there and learn by watching them. I became interested and I have been carving and printing to this day.”
But Pan and other artists say New Year woodcut printing is not merely a waning art form in Taiwan; it is now nearly extinct. Only a handful of local artisans still hand carve the wood blocks, then use water-based inks to stamp them out one by one on high grade paper. Using this method, a printer can produce only about six prints per hour, if using a single color. By comparison, automated printing equipment can produce hundreds of glossy, multicolored New Year posters per hour.
Pan Yuan-shih is not surprised that this ancient art form, which was thriving in Taiwan in the 1940s, has nearly disappeared. “Woodblock printing cannot keep up with modern printing,” he says. Another reason is that neither printmakers nor consumers treat the prints as works of art. “Professional printers treat prints – for instance, Door god – as utilitarian objects, not as pieces of art,” Pan says. And the public considers them merely as seasonal decorations; most tear theirs down and discard them after the holiday.
Collector Huang Tien-heng attributes the loss of the art form partly to Taiwan's population explosion and partly to the introduction of automated printing processes. “In the past, we had only tens of thousands of people in Taiwan – but now suddenly there are more than 20 million people,” Huang says. “Woodblock printing just cannot keep up with today's pace.”
Museum director Huang Tsai-lang explains that Western printing has influenced the field in more ways than simply introducing new technology. “Western prints are more realistic,” Huang says. “Traditional Chinese prints, which are symbolic, seem out of date. It's all psychological.” As social values changed, traditional motifs lost their relevance and meaning, he explains. One of the popular New Year symbols is a succulent pomegranate with seeds, representing a wish for many generations of sons. “But society has changed so fast – we are now taught that two kids are just right,” Huang says. “Many young couples don't even want children. The prints can no longer reflect modem value systems.”
New Year prints offer families good luck for the coming year. Door Gods, tigers, and lions offer protection. The god of Wealth, and various lucky symbols attract good fortune.
The narrow thematic scope in Taiwan's traditional New Year prints has made them less adaptable to the island's rapid modernization. “We include only themes of petitioning deities, expelling evil, and soliciting good luck,” Huang says. “But in Japan, woodblock prints are designed to meet important needs of the middle and lower class. For instance, their “beauties” prints portray the Japanese ideal of women. So the Japanese have been able to preserve their woodblock printing. “The broader range of themes expressed in Japanese prints, and the general respect for the art form, have helped them remain popular.
Changes in lifestyle, especially in Taiwan's cities, have eliminated the utilitarian features of New Year prints. For example, the demon-quelling Door gods were traditionally assigned in pairs to guard the double doors of the entrance gate, but this is no longer possible since most urbanites live in apartments that feature a single door or where landlords frown upon pasting hangings on the walls. Even more significant, growing numbers of those who do paste up the prints no longer believe in their supernatural attribute – the deities have been stripped of their ancient protective powers. And even as decorations, prints of the centuries-old Kitchen god look displaced and antiquated in modern kitchens equipped with microwave ovens and electric rice cookers.
Woodblock printing dates back 1,000 years. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the art form flourished in Tianjin and Suzhou, where artists added hand-painted details like those found in these elaborate opera figures.
Even so, artist Pan Yuan-shih points out that other Asian cultures assign more value to their woodblock prints. “In Japan, they knew that woodcuts could not compete with lithographic printing,” he says, “so they purposely decided to use foreign printing methods for mass production, and to keep traditional woodcut printing purely as an art form.” In fact, Japanese museums contain many remnants of Chinese New Year prints imported into Japan during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. By contrast, few prints have survived in Taiwan or Mainland China.
A small collection of antique wood-block prints have been reproduced recently in Taiwan by using century-old woodblocks from private collections. But only a few of these printing blocks remain, aside from limited collections held by the island's temple – and these are used exclusively for divination purposes. When many printers in Taiwan abandoned woodblock printing for modern methods, most discarded their woodblocks. Some even chopped them up for firewood. Today, even Tainan's Rice Street printers are mass-producing holiday posters with metallic borders, gaudy colors, and commercialized themes. Reusable plastic versions are even on the market.
Traditionalists such as woodblock print collector Huang Tien-heng strongly oppose the new commercialized styles. “The stuff produced today is getting worse and worse,” Huang says. “The more elegant they try to make them, the more tasteless the prints turn out, and the gaudier the designs. Some prints are even gilded in gold. Frankly, when I see them, I want to throw up.”
These two tigers ward off evil, while the pomegranate symbolizes a wish for many generations of sons. In an age of smaller and smaller families, some of the New Year themes are becoming dated.
Will the tradition of New Year woodblock prints be lost? To make sure younger generations are exposed to the art form, several woodcut artists have begun teaching it in elementary,junior high, and high schools. Although some form of printmaking is included in the arts curriculum of most elementary and junior high schools, woodblock printing is not included unless a teacher familiar with it. Because many art teachers are not art majors, artist and teacher Chung You-hui (鍾有輝) estimates that only about half of Taiwan students are exposed to woodcut printing. Those who do learn it, study for two weeks to a month during their schooling.
To teach more educators the craft, Chung has organized a group of printmakers to offer training courses for teachers. Artist and historian Pan Yuan-shih also periodically conducts an eight-session course for high school teachers as part of the provincial government's teacher training program. Pan holds classes at the National Tainan Teachers College, where his courses cover all stages of traditional woodcutting from design to cutting and printing.
Thanks to these efforts, most high schools offer short woodcut printmaking classes and a handful offer more extensive courses as part of an experimental art program for interested high school students. At the university level, most art departments include woodblock printing. The finest university printing facility was established in 1991 by Chung You-hui at the National Taiwan Academy of Arts. At its printmaking center, students can learn step by step the rudimentary skills of traditional woodblock printing techniques. Chung also teaches woodcut printing courses at the National Institute of the Arts.
For professional artists, the most important methods of keeping alive the tradition of woodcut New Year prints have been art exhibitions and competitions. The government has organized three types of printmaking events: a biennial international print exhibit, a biennial exhibition of traditional Chinese prints, and an annual New Year print competition.
These events began in 1983, when the Council for Cultural Planning and Development (CCPD) hosted Taiwan's first International Print Exhibition in Taipei. The original inspiration for the exhibition had little to do with printmaking; the council simply wanted to host an international art exhibition in Taiwan. The show hosted a number of local and foreign artists displaying a wide range of prints, including woodblocks.
The international print exhibition became a regular biennial event. Since the second show in 1985, CCPD has included a special exhibition on traditional Chinese prints. The first featured traditional woodblock prints of Taiwan. Organized by then CCPD chairman Chen Chi-lu (陳奇祿) and traditional woodcut artists and collectors, including Pan Yuan-shih and Huang Tsai-Iang, the special display was the first systematic effort to document, preserve, and promote Chinese woodblock prints in Taiwan. To prepare, Chen and his team of researchers launched an islandwide effort to collect and classify Taiwan's surviving woodcut prints and printmaking materials from family collections, paper mills, and temples. In addition, Pan and two other researchers spent six months gathering additional materials from private collectors and public and private institutions worldwide. In the end, they had collected 1,600 original woodblock prints and more than 600 woodblocks, which they used to make new prints. All prints, woodblocks, and tools are now held by CCPD.
To accompany the special exhibition, CCPD produced a video, Traditional Woodblock Prints of Taiwan and Their Production, documenting the history of woodblock printing and production methods in Taiwan. Huang Tsai-Iang also compiled and edited a comprehensive, illustrated 300-page volume, Traditional Woodblock Prints of Taiwan. During the show, workshops and seminars on woodcut printing were offered islandwide to art educators and artists.
“The Art of Traditional Chinese New Year Prints,” CCPD's traditional exhibition for 1991, included the island's largest display of traditional woodblock New Year prints, bringing together three thousand examples from twenty-one countries. Most prints dated from the later Ching dynasty to the 1930s. The exhibition was accompanied by a laser disk presentation of woodcut printing procedures, recorded commentaries, and hands-on workshops given by Pan Yuan-shih and other woodcut artists. Prints of all exhibition entries and a collection of academic research papers on New Year woodblock prints were compiled as a follow-up to the exhibition.
Another tradition started by CCPD in 1985 was an annual New Year print competition. The first year drew two hundred entries. A team of ten arts professionals chose five winning works based on technical skill and creativity. Limited editions were made of each winning print for distribution to government-run local and overseas cultural centers and for sale to the public.
The prints were more popular than expected. “The first time we made just two hundred copies of each [award-winning] print, but everyone wanted them,” Huang Tsai-lang says. SO CCPD began printing more and more copies. “At first collectors just wanted one design, then they wanted entire sets,” he says. “The need was so great that we increased it to three thousand editions of each winning work. But it's still not enough.” In the 1993 competition, three thousand prints were made of each of the nine winning prints. A total of 27,000 reprints will be distributed locally and abroad; CCPD also allows private companies to distribute reprints for promotional, non-profit use.
The annual competition is not confined to woodcut prints. Organizers say such a restriction would require too much time and would not meet public demands for reprints; Pan estimates that it would take three months to make only a few thousand copies of woodcut prints. Instead, many of the entries are made by lithography, silkscreening, etching, and photoengraving, or a mixture of techniques.
The thematic and stylistic range of the competition is deliberately broad, ranging from traditional deities to modern themes such as environmentalism. Contemporary symbols, including railroad tracks and the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, have been used to depict social progress. Many artists include both modern and traditional elements.
Traditional images, such as symbols of the Chinese zodiac, are popular themes in the contest. But some artists juxtapose traditional and Western artistic styles, while retaining the traditional spirit of New Year blessings. Despite such mixing of new and old, some arts professionals express a desire for more innovation in adapting the prints to modern life. According to arts writer Chuang Po-ho (莊伯和), who compiled The Art of the Traditional Chinese New Year Print, creativity is crucial in preserving the art form. “Traditional New Year prints should not necessarily be confined to conservative themes – new ideas should always emerge to meet the needs of the public,” he wrote in an introduction to the 1991 exhibition of New Year prints. “Mainland Chinese artists are now experimenting with innovative New Year print designs, depicting realistic themes relevant to life today. It's a pity that so few artists in Taiwan are choosing the same course.”
Artist Pan Yuan-shih echoes these sentiments. “I think tradition must be preserved, but we mustn't hold the art form back-society is dynamic and progressive,” he says. “I hope young people will use traditional woodcut techniques to portray new ideas. We mustn't keep rehashing old themes. We must preserve the old printing techniques but create modern themes.” – Tzen Peifeng ( 鄭蓓芬) is a translator and editor based in Taipei.