Clay sculpture Afu, Qing Dynasty
Toys are a major variety of folk art and part of traditional culture. Traditional Chinese literary and historical allusions, operas, legends, local mountain and river customs, traditional customs, etc., are all reflected in the toys. Among folk toys, traditional themes account for the majority, and there are few involved in realistic themes. Among works such as clay sculptures, manes, silk people and self-propelled bells, woodblock prints "Selected Immortal Figures", and lantern screen paintings, the characters of the four famous works are common themes.
There are many toys with folklore as the theme in China, and the more typical one is the story of the Wuxi clay sculpture "Da Afu". According to local legend, a long time ago, there was a monster called "Nian" in huishan, which came out at the end of each year to hurt people and destroy things, and the people were suffering. Heaven heard the news and sent a man and a woman and two "sand children" to eliminate all the harm, and the people were at peace. Later, people greeted and wished each other greetings and blessings at the end of the year, commonly known as "New Year". The two "sand children" unfortunately died one after another, and in order to commemorate the little heroes who eliminated harm for the people, people made statues according to their appearance and offered them to their homes, and later gradually formed the custom of offering sacrifices to Ah Fu. The formula of Ah Fu is: cross-legged lion or unicorn, head comb and grasp bun, generally placed in pairs. Originally a "Sha Bao'er" mount, the Rui Beast was accompanied by the auspicious meanings of "everything is as expected" and "Kirin sends a son".
Guangdong Chaozhou clay sculpture - Chen Sanwuniang
Chinese folk toys are based on literature and history works everywhere, the four famous works of Chinese classical literature "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Journey to the West" and other works such as "The Legend of the White Snake" are common themes of toys; Wuxi's hand-pinched drama clay people and Tianjin 'Clay Man Zhang' works are more inclined to literary works, and the number of works is quite large. The traditional Chinese folk tale "Twenty-Four Filial Pieties" is also one of the subjects of clay sculptures, which are still painted in Liaocheng, Shandong Province. The theme of characters is mainly the heroes of the past dynasties and the famous stories depicted in the sages, models and saints, gentlemen, such as Confucius, Guan Gong, Yue Fei and other sages and heroes, heroes are all celebrity themes in folk decoration toys. Other toys, such as "Color Selection Grid", "Promotion Chart", Water Margin Leaf Play Card, etc., also often use historical figures and famous characters as themes. In addition, the eight immortals, Fulu Shou Sanxing, Guan Yu, Zhuge Liang and other literary works are also common in toy shapes.
Card toy Water Margin leaf play
Among the traditional Chinese toys, clay sculptures are mostly used to express the theme of opera. The prosperity of Chinese opera was in the late Qing Dynasty 200 years ago, when watching opera was one of the biggest entertainment activities of the people, and the characters and costumes in the opera, as well as the plots of the empty city plan, The Ghost Fight, and the Legend of the White Snake were the most common themes in the toy. Many of the famous Wuxi hand-squeezed opera characters and Tianjin "Clay Man Zhang" painted sculptures are directly based on the stage performance scenes at that time.
Doushui, a traditional work of Huishan clay people
Puppets and shadow puppets are used as toys or props for direct performance of opera. In the folk opera shadow puppet play, "Mu Lian Saves the Mother" is a must-performed song on the Eight Rites of Buddha's Day in early April. Opera performed with puppets and shadow puppets is the only two main prop plays outside of Chinese live-action dramas, and its history is more than 1,000 years, which is an authentic traditional Chinese toy play (prop play).
Kwan Leung's 1980 painting of a character in martial arts, a collection of the Hong Kong Museum of Art
China's traditional folk beliefs are also inseparable from various dolls and toys, among which eliminating disasters and warding off evil spirits is an important meaning of toys. Kite flying is a common form used by the folk to suppress diseases, after the kite is released into the sky, the flyer cuts the kite (usually used "Bagua" kite), which means that the disease and obscurity will go with the wind. In the seventieth episode of "Dream of the Red Chamber", Li Yi persuaded Lin Daiyu to take all the sick roots with her by flying a kite. Because people think that flying a kite can release obscurity, the kite that others let go and drop can never be picked up and replayed, so as not to get involved in obscurity.
The sachets used by the folk of the Dragon Boat Festival are also hung on the body to avoid the "evil moon" and "five poisons". Folk believe that the fifth month of the lunar calendar is a month where insects are pests and ghosts are haunted, so in order to protect the safety of the family, paste five poisonous gourd charms on the door, smear yellow wine on the head, hang incense bags, and wear belly pockets embroidered with the pattern of cutting out the five poisons for children. The statues of the gods hanging in the houses (the ethnic groups in Yunnan), the shehuo masks (horse spoons) in Shaanxi, and the tethered soul lions and town house lions widely used in the northwest are all used to ward off disasters and eliminate harm.
Tiger head shoes carry the auspicious meaning of driving away ghosts and evil spirits
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