After I came to Henan, I knew that there was a small town called Zhuxian Town in Kaifeng County, where there was a thousand-year-old stunt, that is, woodcut New Year pictures, but I never went to the side to see them on the spot. Only occasionally, during the Cultural Heritage Day, I saw some performance drills at activities organized by some government departments. It has always been a regret as a cultural journalist. Later, because almost all the media did too much, Zhuxian Town's woodcut New Year pictures became more and more famous, which naturally did not constitute a disappearing cultural type that journalists rescued and excavated, and there was no need to do it. However, it is always a pity that the original woodcut New Year pictures in China culture are not recorded in Old Witness. Just a while ago, I learned from a netizen that there is a kind of hua county woodblock New Year pictures in hua county, Anyang City, which has more profound connotation of China's history and culture and research value of folklore research significance than Zhuxian Town and "Five Woodblock New Year Pictures".

According to Wei, president of hua county Woodblock New Year Pictures Research Association and former director of hua county Cultural Bureau, hua county Woodblock New Year Pictures have a history of nearly a thousand years, but no one can tell the real history, but one thing is certain, that is, hua county Woodblock New Year Pictures can be much earlier than those recorded more than ten years ago, even earlier than all the woodblock New Year Pictures, because hua county Woodblock New Year Pictures have earlier cultural expressions of human beings as evidence. Other kinds of woodblock New Year pictures are mainly folk stories, opera stories and historical deduction stories. The story and content in hua county woodblock New Year pictures is Wen Zi, who has been lost for a long time. Even the last inheritor of woodblock New Year pictures can't tell the source of the words he carved. Hua county woodcut, of course, comes from hua county, mainly concentrated in Cizhouzhai Township, Laodian Township and Baliying Township in hua county. Hua county is located in the old course of the Yellow River, and there are Cizhouzhai Township, Laodian Township and Baliying Township in hua county. During the Qianlong period in Huaxian County, it was a commercial port in the Central Plains with developed commerce and prosperous economy, which created a good environment for the production and sales of woodblock New Year pictures. However, with the constant change of historical situation, the development of hua county woodblock New Year pictures has also experienced a very tortuous course. In the process of inheritance, artists are forced to make a living and keep their skills secret from each other, so they are extremely cautious when choosing inheritors. As a national folk art, it is very difficult to collect and sort out because of its long history and extremely scarce information. According to Li Fangtun, a living elder in Cizhouzhai Township, the founder of Li Fangtun's woodcut is a down-and-out artist Han (formerly known as Han Zhai). He was ingenious, devoted himself to painting on woodcuts, and integrated into the living customs and culture of local people, forming woodcuts. His life was thus enriched, and so was his craft. After the spread of the younger generation, several faction numbers gradually appeared. During the Qianlong period, there appeared three workshops represented by Han Fengqi, Han Fengyi and Han Fengxiang, namely Xinglong, Xingyi and Sheng Xing.

On the eve of liberation, the economy was depressed and the people were poor. Artists who make New Year pictures have changed careers, and only a handful of workshops have opened for production. Around 1958, "ghosts" were swept away, and woodblock New Year pictures became more and more declining. At that time, some artists risked being criticized for burying old paintings in the ground, roofs and wallboard, and preserved some layouts, but many precious layouts were destroyed and disappeared forever. It was not until the policy of 1962 was relaxed that the woodblock New Year pictures market began to recover. Take the whole village of Lifangtun Village in Cizhou Village as an example. 1963, more than 400 people in the village and nearly 200 people in more than 30 households made New Year pictures. Each family has twenty or thirty boards, and one person can print more than 100 a day. The whole village can sell more than10000000 New Year pictures, one for four or five. Foreign art dealers sometimes have to wait four or five days to buy New Year pictures, and each New Year picture must be stamped by a special person designated by the government as a tax payment procedure. In the turbulent years, as the product of "sealing, funding and repairing", woodblock New Year pictures could not keep one edition and were forced to stop production. Some old printing plates were buried underground and on the roof. After the Cultural Revolution, after these pages were dug out, we tried to make some, but the output was limited and the sales could not move. Until the reform and opening up, woodcut, as a treasure of folk handicrafts, was valued and appreciated by more and more people, and attracted more and more attention and love. On the basis of mutual exchange and learning, woodcut artists kept digging and sorting out, so that woodcuts could be restored and artists began to find their place again. Production and marketing have reached prosperity again. As soon as the twelfth lunar month came, the painting sellers came from afar with carts to exchange agricultural products such as wheat, sorghum and corn for New Year pictures.

Hua county woodblock New Year pictures are rich in content, including immortals, genealogy, fairy tales, landscapes, drama stories and so on. And main hall, door gods, kitchen gods, couplets, fans, etc. , mainly related to folk beliefs, reflecting the expectations of the ancients to live in harmony with heaven and earth.

Hua county woodblock New Year pictures are the combination of printing and painting. The basic procedures are: drawing, carving, printing, and coloring. This most primitive production process still exists today.

During the Qianlong period, most of the woodcuts in Huaxian county were sold to all parts of the country through painting dealers in Xunxian, Neihuang, Dongming, Changyuan, Lankao, Kaifeng and this county, and were also purchased by painting dealers in Hebei, Shandong, Anhui and Shanxi. These dealers specialize in wholesale woodblock New Year pictures, and some of them continue to the third and fourth generations. In the twelfth lunar month, people are in an endless stream, waiting in line, and New Year pictures can't be made. Sometimes they stay at the artist's house for more than ten days. By the end of the Qing dynasty, it had been exported to three northeastern provinces, Inner Mongolia and other places. There are many unrecognizable characters in the frame found so far. In 2007, hua county Woodblock New Year Pictures were listed in the first batch of intangible cultural heritage list in Henan Province, and in 2008, they were listed in the national intangible cultural heritage list. Mr. Feng Jicai, Vice Chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the Democratic Progressive Party, said after his visit to hua county in June+10, 2006 that the hua county woodblock New Year pictures were "an amazing discovery in the rescue of cultural heritage, and a newly discovered New Year picture product in the past half century. A lost civilization, a forgotten historical glory on the land of Zhongzhou.

After listening to Wei's introduction, the reporter and his party followed him to the home of Geng Jianshe, the last inheritor of hua county woodblock New Year pictures. Here, I saw the production process of Huaxian woodcut New Year pictures and the lively scenes of the whole family, especially from the inheritance of his son Geng Shangfeng and their unique skills of nearly 30 generations. The future of woodcut in Huaxian County will be more brilliant than the woodcut New Year pictures in Zhuxian Town.