Essay | Zhang Xinwen: The Past of New Year Paintings Welcoming Spring

happy New Year. Xu Shurong/Paper Cut

Author: Zhang Xinwen

In my memory, every year before the Spring Festival, every family put a woodblock New Year painting on the stove where they cooked, the woman was busy on the stove, and the man was adding wood under the pot. There are also six words under the New Year painting "poor pot door, rich water tank", to the effect that the climate is dry during the New Year, less firewood and grass should be placed in front of the pot door, and the water tank should be filled with water to prevent fire and ensure that there is a water source to fight the fire. No wonder the writer Chi Zijian said, "The first to greet the New Year was not lanterns, Spring Festival and firecrackers, but New Year paintings... With the smell of fragrant ink wafting out, the bright oil paint of the New Year painting also came into view, making people feel as if they had seen spring in an instant. ”

When I was nine years old, my sister, who was a private teacher, returned from her aunt's house in Nanjing, and not only brought back a set of glasses for drinking tea, but also a roll of New Year paintings. Drinking tea glass transparent and clean, very good-looking, the outside is painted with ducks playing in the water, red color, there is spring river plumbing, duck prophetic mood; we put the New Year paintings one by one posted, the original dark mud house suddenly has vitality, happiness and spring-like atmosphere, very good-looking, than "poor pot door, rich water tank" That New Year painting Bo eyeballs ...

My father knew that I loved to read, so he pasted the New Year painting of "Elementary School on the Lake" on the front wall of the hall. After dinner, my mother finished cleaning up the table, so I brought the kerosene lamp with the glass cover to the dinner table, began to do my homework, and from time to time I would glance at the painting of that year, thinking: You love to learn, but I am also a good child who loves to learn! That painting should reflect that the mainland was vigorously popularizing education in the 1950s and 1960s, and even the children of fishermen had books to read and school. The state has built schools on boats, blue skies, turquoise lakes, teachers holding hands with students standing at the entrance of the school, welcoming children who come to school in fishing boats. The picture layout is reasonable, the classroom is clean and tidy, the air is fresh, and even the wild ducks flying in the air are also lingering, a thriving scene. I remember that there are also "Liu Yi's Biography", "White Snake Biography", "Honghu Red Guards", and Tianjin Yang Liuqing's "Five Rats In Tokyo"...

New Year painting spring comes early, not only adults like, even the infants in the swaddling also like New Year paintings, the son of Liu Er Aunt next door has been crying for several days in a row, Liu Er Aunt picked up her son and drilled into my house, the big winter open arms while milking her son, while looking at the New Year paintings on the wall of my house, she can see it fascinatingly, and her son, who has always been crying, is also quietly watching the New Year painting with his mother at this moment! Later, as long as the child cried, she took her son to my house to see the New Year painting, looking at the New Year painting little guy grinned, giggling, there is a crying wall abroad, our family has a laughing wall, Oh! The New Year is so good, the New Year painting is really good!

When I was in high school, when the winter vacation was about to end, the snow was particularly heavy, and my table mate said that he had a New Year painting at home that you had not seen, insisting that I go over to see it, ask him what the theme was, and he said that you would know it when you came to my house. Young and crazy, we both ignored the cold, in the bright moonlight, stepping on the snow to see the New Year paintings, this is a road to run more than ten miles! When he arrived at his house, he realized that it was the bald-headed and big-bellied monk who was there to open his mouth and enjoy it: the big belly could accommodate the affairs of the world. I couldn't help but smile, very happy, I understood the pain of the table. He knew the bitterness and wandering of me during that time, so he took me to see his family's New Year paintings, and remembered that when I returned to school overnight, we were in the snow world, singing all the way and running forward, as if spring was in front of us.

When my son got married before the Spring Festival of the previous year, my classmate Houguang gave me a New Year painting: the whole picture was full of red plums, and two magpies were singing and singing. After posting it, Houguang punched me, "Congratulations! Old classmate - today you are a veritable joy on the top of your eyebrows! When the two of us embraced each other, tears couldn't help but flow out.

Last year, the leaders found me and wanted to make a propaganda New Year painting with my figure, the theme of which was epidemic prevention and control, and traveling with masks. I gladly accepted this task, and what an honor it is to contribute to the fight against the epidemic! Inside and outside the painting, spring in winter, send people a sense of melting warmth, enough!

With the development of the times, the diversification of perspectives, the network, there are too many things to see, the New Year painting is getting depressed, and the New Year painting is no longer a must-have item for the New Year. However, the past of the New Year paintings celebrating the spring is always imprinted in the depths of memory, lingering, and thinking like new.

Source: China Youth Daily client