Chongqing-As the Lunar New Year approaches, New Year pictures are hanging and pasting in both urban and rural areas. The festive atmosphere and sense of ritual brought by the colorful New Year pictures add a lot to the year's flavor. This is also the busiest day of the year for Xu Jiahui, the inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage Liangping Woodblock New Year Prints, to make New Year pictures for the upcoming Spring Festival.

The 55-year-old Xu Jiahui has been creating New Year pictures for 40 years. He is the only New Year picture craftsman who has inherited his family's craftsmanship.

Liangping Woodblock New-Year Prints, which originated in the Ming Dynasty, were among the first to be included in the national intangible cultural heritage list. The Xu family founded the "Dehetai" workshop during the Qing Dynasty. In its heyday, the "Dehetai" workshop employed hundreds of workers. After the founding of the Republic of China, the Xu family gradually stopped making New Year pictures due to the industry's decline.

Influenced by the family elders, Xu began to learn and inherit this endangered craft at the age of fifteen. In 2004, Xu Jiahui returned to his hometown and devoted himself to restoring the New Year pictures. Making a New Year picture involves more than 30 processes, including painting, block engraving, and printing. Each process used to be carried out by a specially-assigned person, but now Xu Jiahui can only figure out how to do it by himself.

"The thinner the paper we use, the more exquisite the picture will be. Whether it is the color, the paper, or the character in the picture, it is pleasing to the eye," said Xu. Through the pursuit of excellence in every part, he has built up his own New Year picture studio in Pingjin Town and has made his family's "Dehetai" New Year pictures enjoy a national reputation.

Unlike other overprinted New Year pictures, Liangping Woodblock New-Year Prints are colored with water-based pigment. In addition to overprinted lines, the colors in the picture are hardly hand-painted but are overprinted layer by layer using woodblocks. Thanks to this unique technique similar to modern printing, Liangping Woodblock New-Year Prints stand out from Chinese folk New Year pictures.

Now, Xu is printing the "Heqizhixiang (Heqi Bodhisattva)" picture. "I made this yellow paint myself. This New Year picture uses five woodblocks, including one for printing lines and four for coloring." he introduced. "Heqizhixiang" is one of the classic patterns commonly seen in Liangping Woodblock New-Year Prints, and it was once issued as one of the special stamps, while the door god is the most common theme. The door god is the theme that demonstrates the unique skills of Liangping Woodblock New-Year Prints. In addition to woodblock overprinting, other techniques are combined to finish gorgeous and elegant pictures. Xu Jiahui has always had a wish for New Year pictures with the theme of door gods, that is, to make a great set of New Year pictures with the theme of door gods.

For Xu, the Liangping Woodblock New-Year Prints convey the romance, embody memories, as well as express expectations and affections for hometown. "I like every piece of my work. The best reward for me is to make more people understand what each pattern means."