Foshan, now a westerly suburb of Guangzhou in southern China’s Guangdong province, was once a separate town in its own right, famous for its handicrafts. I’ve written elsewhere of Mr Feng Bingtang, who ran Foshan’s last surviving woodblock studio until his death in 2019, but during its Qing-dynasty heyday Foshan had over one hundred woodblock-printing businesses exporting their wares across …
Two Door Gods from Fengxiang
Here are a pair of door gods from Fengxiang (鳳翔), a small town about 150km west of Xi’an in Shaanxi province. Door god or gate guardians (門神, 護衛) are one of the most common folk prints, put up either side of front doors at Chinese New Year to protect the house from misfortune. One widespread tale credits their invention to …
A Demon-Suppressing Charm
Here’s a rubbing offering protection against demons taken from a stone tablet in the Chunyang temple at Taiyuan (太原純陽宮), the capital of Shanxi province. Chunyang temple was possibly founded during the thirteenth century, though some sources date it to the Wanli reign (1572–1620). Laid out with nine halls and five stone-flagged courtyards, there are gnarled old trees, arched gateways built …
Suppression of the Taiping Rebels: 剿滅粵匪圖
Here’s a woodblock Victory Print from the 1850s titled “Suppression of the Taiping Rebels”. Well, more or less; the title actually calls the Taipings粵匪, “Yue Bandits”. The first-century BC Yue kingdom included parts of Guangdong, Guangxi and Vietnam, used here because the Taiping movement began in Guangxi (the rebels were known by other names too, such as “Longhairs”). Anyway, Victory …
Daoists and Tigers: Zhang Daoling at Shangqing Palace
In popular lore Shangqing Palace (上清宫), a formerly important Daoist temple at Longhu Shan (Dragon-Tiger Mountain) in Jiangxi province, is probably best-known for the opening chapters of Shi Nai’an’s fourteenth-century novel Outlaws of the Marsh – aka The Water Margin – a heroic account of renegades defying the corrupt Song court. According to the novel, 108 malignant spirits are imprisoned …
Immortality and Rockets: the Legend of Chang E
China’s Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. The roundness of the full moon that night represents “wholeness”, the getting together of communities and families to gather in the harvest or to simply enjoy each other’s company by eating mooncakes. These two prints, both collected around 1930 by the Reverend Hallock, tell the story …
Qixi: Double Seventh Festival
The letter accompanying this print was written at Shanghai by the Reverend Hallock on 8 August 1929, and this picture was made for Qixi, the Double Seventh Festival (held on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month – 11 August in 1929). Like Valentine’s day in the West, the festival celebrates romance. The story goes that a cowherd fell …
Two Guanyins
Another print from early 1930s Shanghai courtesy of Reverend Hallock, this time of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guanyin. She’s shown in two simultaneous incarnations: the Bringer of Children, and riding the Aoyu, that fish-like sea monster at the bottom of the print. Although the Aoyu aspect represents Guanyin subduing evil in general terms, at Shanghai and coastal eastern China this …
Pan Gu: Humans from Parasites
A while back I posted about the Reverend Henry Galloway Comingo Hallock, who in the late 1920s sent stacks of woodblock prints of Chinese gods, bought in Shanghai, back to the US, along with letters describing the deities and seeking funds for his various Church-led causes. I’ve picked these prints up here and there but recently received a cache of …
A Blue Ground Print from Yangliuqing
Here’s a “Blue Ground” or qingdi print (青地年画) from Yangliuqing showing the master strategist Kongming, aka Zhuge Liang, from the historical novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. A roundel above contains a generalised lanscape with figures, with a pair of crickets (feeding on some fruit) below. I especially like the crickets. As with most Yangliuqing prints, the outlines have been …