Abstract

Southern Shanxi is in the middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin. Its opera New Year Prints are the typical representative of Chinese folk arts with distinctive regional features, representing the bold, unrestrained and simple and honest temperament of the people living in northern China. As two forms of folk art, opera and New Year picture both rooted in the daily life and production of the local people, and nurtured by the fertile historical and cultural soil. Watching opera performance has been the most important large-scale entertainment event for the local people who would be willing to walk several miles to another village or the county town to watch one opera. The broad and solid audience base and a considerable number of mural artists and highy developed woodblock engraving technology bred a special genre of folk art woodblock New Year prints, which developed quickly into different kinds and formed its own unique artistic expression.