Conclusion. In rethinking the role of narrativity in nianhua, I have emphasized the

In rethinking the role of narrativity in nianhua, I have emphasized the

multisensory and embodied forms of engagement with nianhua of both the past and

present. In particular, I have stressed the prominent role of performative gestures,

storytelling, and auspicious speech in shaping the social significance of nianhua in both

the home and marketplace. This chapter thus represents a critical move away from

treating nianhua as visual illustrations of pre-existing narratives found in written and

verbal texts. The interview sessions and visual material discussed in this chapter show

that nianhua do not always communicate narratives in a linear or structured fashion

comparable to written or verbal texts. Instead, the works may serve as dynamic sites of

narrative density, embedded with a range of narrative cues that may be activated by

knowledgeable viewers in both gesture and speech.

The narrativizing practices surrounding nianhua thus require close attention to

their lived contexts, where different speakers and audiences may play a co-creative role

in shaping the flow of the narrative. In this sense, no two narrative “tellings” are ever the

same; they reflect complex processes of reactivation rather than the duplication or

repetition of fixed narratives. Narrativizing practices are not rigidly confined to the

nianhua object, which may only be understood as narrative works when they are

narrativized in practice. Although nianhua may activate and guide a narrative

performance in a variety of ways, the performance itself is also mediated by the

speaker(s) knowledge of nianhua, personal memories, and immediate social engagement

with a particular audience. In the words of Diana Taylor, “materials from the archive

shape embodied practices in innumerable ways, yet never totally dictate embodiment.”276

While opening up the visual to the sensory immediacy of touch, sound, gesture,

and movement, the “corpothetic” forms of engagement with nianhua also shed light on

the problematic categories used to identify certain nianhua as narrative illustrations. In

this regard, I have focused primarily on the problematic category of “theater-based”

nianhua by drawing on many examples that fall outside of this category. Wang Xingru’s

Medicine King painting is an altar painting, but it is also a work with high narrative

density and direct ties to theatrical performance of the Medicine King, as seen in the

elaborate storytelling session with Wang, who draws on a range of discourses and

narrative cues in the painting to weave together a strategic presentation of the painting’s

significance. Wang’s storytelling also incorporates a variety of theatrical elements such

as gesture, mime, vocal intonations, and the use of props to establish the authority of the

speaker and to dramatize the significance and value of the work at hand. At the same

time, theatrical references pervade a wide range of works that are not usually examined

as “theater-based” nianhua, including door deity prints and popular scroll paintings that

have appropriated and transformed theatrical elements for new uses.

In taking up the notion of narrative density, I have also offered an alternate

analysis of the famous Greeting Spring painting, a historic work that has gained

prominence in Mianzhu’s contemporary nianhua industry. A close examination of the

ritual theater and rebus imagery depicted in the painting reveals the multiple narrative

possibilities that are prevalent throughout the work. In particular, I have pointed to

276 Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham:

Duke University Press, 2003), 21.

evidence that the work was both designed and used as a ritually efficacious painting to

activate the exchange of auspicious speech and/or auspicious wishes for a business

venture or partnership between elites involved in the herbal medicines industry of the late

Qing period. Instead of limiting the painting to a narrative interpretation based solely on

the repeating figure of the magistrate and a linear unfolding of the street parade, I have

attempted to recover alternate possibilities of embodied interaction and ritual use.

To return once again to the initial question of what is at stake, politically and

historically, in these embodied practices of narrativity, this chapter has stressed its

performative nature, which is a powerful source of social and cultural capital for nianhua

makers and users alike. These embodied practices push for a more situated and nuanced

view of how nianhua of both the past and present participate in a range of secular and

sacred discourses beyond the realms of art and folk art. Most significantly, they expose

the connections that have been concealed by folk art typologies that order and organize

nianhua archives into neat categories based on ritual function or format.

Chapter Four: To Build a Museum and a Village: the Race for Mianzhu’s Nianhua