China News Service, Suzhou, February 14 (Reporter Kan Feng) It’s the Spring Festival again. In Dangshan County, Anhui Province, Huang Xingqiao, the 66-year-old intangible cultural heritage inheritor of Dangshan New Year paintings, is facing the busiest time of the year.

　　Sending New Year pictures into the community, displaying New Year picture production on the streets, and promoting intangible cultural heritage on campus... Huang Xingqiao, who has been painting New Year pictures for thirty or forty years, is busy almost every Spring Festival. In his words, "New Year pictures, New Year pictures, New Year's Eve are The best time to promote the art of New Year pictures."

  The picture shows Huang Xingqiao creating Dangshan New Year paintings on-site during the Spring Festival intangible cultural heritage display event.

　　As an ancient Chinese folk art style, New Year paintings are an important cultural carrier for people to pray for blessings and welcome the New Year during the Spring Festival. Over thousands of years, Chinese New Year paintings have also formed multiple schools.

　　Dangshan County, Suzhou City, Anhui Province is located at the junction of the four provinces of Anhui, Suzhou, and Henan. It belongs to the area of ​​the old course of the Yellow River. It has a history of more than 2,200 years. The unique geographical environment and long humanistic history have allowed Dangshan to accumulate a wealth of folk art styles. Dangshan New Year paintings are exactly one of them.

　　Dangshan New Year pictures are rich in themes, including myths and legends, historical stories, landscapes, flowers and birds, etc. They mostly express festive and peaceful meanings. They include door paintings, stove paintings, wall paintings, central hall New Year pictures, single-frame New Year pictures, couplet New Year pictures, etc.

　　Huang Xingqiao, who has been engaged in art education, began to study and study Dangshan New Year paintings in the 1980s. Having taught art in schools for decades, he can best feel the ups and downs experienced in the inheritance of New Year paintings.

　　"In the 1990s, there were more than 60 people who inherited Dangshan New Year paintings. The county cultural center held exhibitions and training classes every year to promote the artistic inheritance of New Year paintings. But later, the pace of social life became faster and faster, and everyone was busy with their own affairs. Many people stopped painting New Year paintings. , there are even fewer young people painting during the school year.”

　　Huang Xingqiao said that with the changes of the times, especially the development of technology and changes in market demand, the traditional New Year painting creation skills are facing the dilemma of protection and inheritance.

　　However, even though New Year paintings are becoming more and more niche in the market and the number of painters is declining, Huang Xingqiao always believes that "the older something is, the more it cannot be lost."

　　For more than 30 years, Huang Xingqiao has sought out old artists to sort out the traditional techniques of Dangshan New Year pictures, went abroad to learn and exchange the creative techniques of different genres of New Year pictures, and taught and promoted the production techniques of traditional New Year pictures on campus...

　　"My teacher taught me, and I have the responsibility to pass it on." In Huang Xingqiao's view, to pass on old craftsmanship and rejuvenate it, we can't just rely on school education, but also research new production techniques, New cultural elements and new market demands allow ancient New Year pictures to imbue them with the connotation of the times and regain the market.

　　In recent years, on the one hand, he has insisted on exploring the old techniques of Dangshan New Year paintings and selected fine and hard Dangshan pear wood to make the painting blocks, allowing the decades-old Dangshan New Year painting woodblock engraving technology to be passed down.

　　On the other hand, he seized on the current young people's pursuit of the "national trend" and made bold innovations in plate making, color use, themes, etc., integrating traditional New Year pictures with a large number of contemporary cultural elements, and expanding in the fields of cultural creative production, art collection, etc. New functions and new values ​​of New Year pictures.

　　"In recent years, the country has continued to increase investment in the protection and inheritance of excellent traditional culture. What is even more gratifying is that more and more young people now love our traditional culture. New Year paintings have not only survived in the market, but have also become popular. Get up." Huang Xingqiao said.

　　In 2010, Dangshan New Year paintings were included in the third batch of representative projects of provincial intangible cultural heritage in Anhui Province. Since then, Huang Xingqiao has been approved to be the representative inheritor of the sixth batch of provincial intangible cultural heritage projects in Anhui Province.

　　In the past two years, with the support of the Dangshan County Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, the Dangshan New Year Painting Institute and the Dangshan Woodblock New Year Painting Research Institute have been established one after another. More and more students are studying New Year paintings with Huang Xingqiao.

　　After retiring from his position as an art teacher in 2018, Huang Xingqiao is still often invited to teach Dangshan New Year paintings in primary and secondary schools. He also leads more young art teachers to join his team, promotes the introduction of intangible cultural heritage into schools, and allows more children to understand the culture of his hometown and inherit it. Intangible cultural heritage skills.

　　In the New Year of the Dragon, Huang Xingqiao's New Year painting "The Prosperity of the Year of the Dragon" is very popular in the local area. After retiring, he set himself the goal of producing Dangshan New Year paintings with twelve zodiac signs. Currently, he has completed the production of six zodiac signs.

　　"The zodiac is the most traditional cultural element with the most flavor of the year, and it also has the meaning of reincarnation and continuous inheritance." Huang Xingqiao said, hoping that these zodiac paintings can record the efforts of their generation of intangible cultural heritage, and hope that more young people will learn Because these zodiac New Year pictures retain the flavor of the year, remember nostalgia, and pass on culture. (over)