Wuqiang New Year Pictures| You can also buy them in Hengshui

| You can also buy them in Hengshui. Introduction to Wuqiang New Year Pictures Wuqiang New Year Pictures, named after its place of origin in Wuqiang, Hebei, can be traced back to the Song and Yuan dynasties, flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were more than 140 painting shops in the southern part of Wuqiang, and more than 60 villages around had thousands of painting workshops, forming the Wuqiang painting industry center, with an annual output of up to 100 million pairs of open prints, selling to half of China. Wuqiang New Year Pictures' drawing, carving, printing, and mounting are all handmade crafts, which have formed a rich local feature over nearly a thousand years. They are characterized by thick and wide money strips, vivid images, full composition, bright colors, and a wide variety of types. They decorate festivals, bring good luck and prosperity, pray for blessings and auspiciousness, fully reflect folk customs and sentiments, and are praised as 'a miniature of agricultural society' and 'an interpretation of the Eastern Bible.' After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Wuqiang New Year Pictures have inherited and developed, innovated and kept pace with the times. In 1993, Wuqiang was named by the Ministry of Culture as 'the hometown of woodblock New Year pictures'; in 2003, it was designated as 'one of the first ten pilot projects of the Chinese national folk culture protection project'; in 2005, it was selected as 'the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list', and in 2006, Wuqiang New Year Pictures special stamps were issued. Feng Jicai, chairman of the Chinese Folklore Association, praised Wuqiang New Year Pictures after his inspection: 'It should be said that all New Year pictures are good, but Wuqiang is the best in the world.'