{"id":404,"date":"2016-02-10T17:47:16","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/?p=404"},"modified":"2016-02-10T17:47:16","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:47:16","slug":"its-new-year-come-say-hi-to-the-chinese-door-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/its-new-year-come-say-hi-to-the-chinese-door-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s New Year, Come Say Hi to the Chinese Door Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Share<\/a><\/p>\n

Written by Cassie Lin<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, I would like to wish everyone a fabulous Chinese New Year! It’s only the 3rd New Year’s Day and traditionally it lasts 15 days (much more luxury than Christmas holiday I presume), there are still more red envelopes with lucky money in to come!<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, right before the Chinese New Year (also known as the Spring Festival), I came across some lovely\u00a0old\u00a0‘Nian Hua’ (New Year Pictures)\u00a0from the poster collection.\u00a0Nian Hua is a traditional decorative art especially made\u00a0for the New Year.\u00a0It is fashioned\u00a0back in the Tang Dynasty (618 -907 A.C.), originally made in a form of Chinese colored woodblock print (a very ancient technique) on textiles\u00a0or rice papers. Nian Hua became extremely popular\u00a0in the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1912 A. C.), its\u00a0significance\u00a0can be equalled to the star on top of a Christmas tree. As each New Year arrives, customarily,\u00a0every family replaces its Nian Hua\u00a0in the household, in order to ‘Say Goodbye to the Past and Welcome the Future.’<\/span><\/p>\n

\"057_meitu_4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

‘Liu Hai Playing with the Toad’\u00a0(Nian Hua, likely dated late 1970s or early 1980s)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The popularity of Nian Hua started to decrease since the early 1990s. People, especially those in cities, were influenced by modern arts to see Nian Hua as\u00a0aged and staid. Unfortunately, my family was part of them.\u00a0Nian Hua\u00a0never was a traditional New Year decoration in\u00a0the household when I was growing up. (I did confronted my mum about it last week, and she defended, “I get thematic flowers and\u00a0plants\u00a0every new year.” Oh well.) \u00a0So, you can imagine the fascination I had when discovering these dated Nian Hua in the Chinese Poster Collection, mythical characters and gods still vividly colored on delicate rice papers, so beautifully illustrated, too beautiful that I almost took them home for decorating the coming new year.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was specially enchanted by Nian Hua of the\u00a0Chinese Door Gods. They are often come in pairs to be\u00a0placed on each side of an entry to a temple, home or business. The Door Gods are believed for keeping evil spirits from entering. Most of the two-piece\u00a0Door God Nian Hua were separated in the poster collection, and I decided to put each pair into one melinex (Archival polyester sheets, for the transparent protection of manuscripts, comics, prints and drawings),\u00a0so\u00a0it’ll make more sense. I had a vague concept of the Door Gods but never know who they really are and what historical figures they refer to, and most importantly, how to pair them correctly.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

‘The Door Gods: Qin Qiong and Jing De’\u00a0(Nian Hua, likely dated late 1970s or early 1980s)<\/strong><\/p>\n

For example, take a look at these two colourful\u00a0door gods\u00a0waving animated swords and riding on cute little ponies (a very efficient way to fight away the devils I believe), I had to google their names (as humiliated as it sounds), ‘Qin Qiong’ and ‘Jing De’,\u00a0then learned they are these two generals from\u00a0the Tang Dynasty. At the time,\u00a0in order to\u00a0award\u00a0their excellent military\u00a0achievement, Emperor Taizong ordered portraits of\u00a0 Qin Qiong and Jing De,\u00a0for them to became\u00a0the prototypes of the\u00a0Door Gods. Traditionally, Qin Qiong is white-faced and should be placed on the left, while Jing De is the black-faced one on the right. (I am wondering if they would play the god cop\/bad cop game when dealing with evil spirits.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nian Hua, likely dated late 1970s or early 1980s<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Door Gods later expanded\u00a0into different characters and meanings over the years, such as the God of Wealth, the Kitchen God and all other genres for fulfilling people’s new year wishes comprehensively. It is a wonderful convention and for me, it’s worth keeping. Not for the purpose of superstition, but for people, especially younger generation,\u00a0to learn a little lost\u00a0history related to the Chinese\u00a0New Year. If you still have\u00a0some unreleased new year’s wishes, come to the Archive Service and meet our Chinese Door Gods, I’m sure they’ll be happy to help.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

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 <\/p>\n

Cassie Lin is a doctoral student at the University of Westminster. She previously worked as an archive assistant at the University of Westminster’s Chinese Poster Collection, now renamed the China Visual Arts Project Archive.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Cassie Lin First of all, I would like to wish everyone a fabulous Chinese New Year! It’s only the 3rd New Year’s Day and traditionally it lasts 15 days (much more luxury than Christmas holiday I presume), there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":248,"featured_media":255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china-visual-arts-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}