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Every New Year,there is a custom of sticking to the gods all over the mainland. People hope to drive away evil spirits and protect their families from time to year. The earliest door gods were two "peach people" carved from peach wood, hanging next to the door. It is said that they were the embodiments of the two gods sent by the Yellow Emperor to lead the wandering ghosts of the world, shendi and yulei, which later evolved into directly painting them as door gods and sticking them on the door. After the Tang Dynasty, there were also portraits of Qin Qiong (Shu Bao) and Wei Chigong (Jingde), two of Emperor Taizong's generals, who were the "classic partners" of many door gods; in addition, there were guan yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhong Kui as door gods. The statues of the door gods are usually pasted on the left and right portals in pairs; there are also paintings of a pair of door gods as one text and one martial art. Let's understand the true face of the "door gods" through the stamps issued over the years.
The door god is the main depiction object of the woodblock New Year painting, and of the 9 sets of "woodblock New Year Painting" series of stamps that China Post has issued, 6 of them are mainly based on the door god. The first appearance was "Zhong Kui" (Figure 1) in the "Yangliu Qing WoodBlock New Year Painting", which was released on January 25, 2003, and Wei Chigong made his debut in the "Door God" vote of the "Yangjiabu WoodBlock New Year Painting" released on February 1, 2005, and the "sitting knife" in the "Mianzhu WoodBlock New Year Painting" launched on February 10, 2007 was also one of the door god shapes; and the "step down whip" in the "Zhuxian Town WoodBlock New Year Painting" released on January 15, 2008 made Wei Chigong the protagonist again The "Door God" in the "Liangping Woodblock New Year Painting", which was released on February 6, 2010, seems to be a civilian official; the "Whip Jingde" in the "Fengxiang Woodblock New Year Painting" launched on January 10, 2011 makes Wei Chigong "open three degrees" on the stamp. It is also very interesting to arrange these 6 stamps with different styles of door gods in different styles in the north and south according to their different postures, which can form 3 pairs of door gods.
A set of four stamps entitled "Legends and Myths (IV) - Door Gods" issued in Macao, China, on June 18, 1997, depicted the two pairs of door gods, Shen Di and Yu Lei, and Qin Qiong and Wei Chigong, respectively, in the form of horizontal doubles, which better represented the form of the door gods painted in pairs. The miniature sheet that was also released at the same time also shows the actual effect of the portrait of the door god posted on the main entrance of the ancestral hall or village house (Fig. 2), which makes it clear at a glance. On June 30, 2004, a set of 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet of "Legends and Myths (VII) - Guan Di" was launched, with the different shapes of Guan Gong with a face like a red date and a green dragon sword, and its source is also a door god painting.
(Author: Situ Yifan)
Source: Guangming Daily