Demystifying the Auspicious

In addition to underscoring the vital importance of theorizing the archive in

relation to its attendant repertoire of embodied activities, this study also makes a key

contribution in rethinking the auspicious or portentous concepts associated with Chinese

nianhua. In the introduction, I reviewed the literature that identifies a shared system of

auspicious signs, symbols, motifs, and themes in Chinese popular art, a view first

established in early 20th century Sinology where scholars produced visual grammars to

organize and categorize auspicious designs in a way that pays little attention to their

contexts of use. The legacy of this approach has carried forth in nianhua research, where

works have been treated as visual or historic texts encoded by a static system of signs and

symbols. In taking a performative view of nianhua however, I have argued for an

alternate approach that treats nianhua as unstable and multivalent entities that give rise to

diverse auspicious or portentous meanings when analyzed in situ.

A key problem is that existing studies have tended to focus on issues of

production and representation with less attention given to the issues of circulation and use.

When ritual consumption is discussed, it has been largely confined to the insular space of

the rural household, a protected space that reifies the notion of a prescriptive and timeless

tradition shaped by a shared sign system. In moving the discussion into the realm of the

nianhua marketplace, this study examined the interconnected spaces of the household,

marketplace, and workshop to argue that meaning is not fixed in nianhua but

continuously performed in different situations that take on the changing conceptions of

the auspicious as tied to people’s everyday needs and livelihood. In many cases, nianhua

are often circulated and displayed in ways that mark out auspicious time and space so that

meaning is not simply represented but presented in specific spatiotemporal configurations

of the home or marketplace. The resurgence of the nianhua industry in the wake of the

Cultural Revolution was not simply an attempt to fill a “spiritual void” or to return to

traditional values, but a result of many complex social factors tied to people’s survival

needs, including the exchange of ritual commodities for livelihood and people’s attempts

to reestablish social ties and networks at the local level.

The notion of “pursuing the auspicious, repelling the portentous” is thus broad

and open-ended; it encompasses the many acts of ritual renewal during the Lunar New

Year as well as everyday efforts to strengthen social relations and to attract “all that is

good” to the home or business. It is an inclusive concept that is not only tied to

cosmological concerns, but also the mundane concerns of daily life. For those directly

engaged in the nianhua industry as producers or distributors, knowledge of auspicious

sites and times carries symbolic capital that can boost one’s position in the marketplace.

A vivid example is the state funded construction of the Nianhua Village and the

appropriation of historic sites to recreate auspicious environments through painted murals

and traditional architectural forms. The staging of the Nianhua Festival at the end of the

year also capitalizes on the auspicious Lunar New Year season. This is not unlike the way

Mianzhu’s early print guilds competed for auspicious sites and dates to hold their

seasonal print markets and guild banquets.

Another key point of intervention here revolves around nianhua’s problematic

status as a form of folk art, where auspicious or portentous meanings are interpreted in

terms of visual representation. In stressing the dialectical interactions of the archive and

the repertoire however, this study unpacks the visual dimension of nianhua as a

synaesthetic practice, where all the senses are engaged. In particular, I have underscored

the aural dimensions of nianhua, where narrative cues and rebuses activate auspicious

speech and storytelling. In some cases, mundane objects are appropriated and displayed

as nianhua simply due to an aural association with the auspicious. This includes the use

of ephemeral blocks of ice or chunks of coal to stand in for protective door deities.

In light of the multifaceted and multisensorial nature of nianhua, I have avoided

the use of a single disciplinary lens to provide a fixed definition of nianhua as folk art,

print culture, or visual culture. These categories illuminate different aspects of nianhua,

often revealing more about their disciplinary boundaries than the everyday activities of

Mianzhu’s nianhua makers and users. In the introduction, I argued for an

interdisciplinary perspective that acknowledges the different discourses that inform

nianhua studies, including the anthropological research in Chinese popular religion as

well as the research in art history and visual culture. Building on the work of Craig

Clunas who also writes at the intersection of visual and material culture studies, I have set

forth the notion of the living nianhua archive, a concept that underscores the unstable,

contingent, and constructed nature of nianhua.

The notion of the living archive has been a productive framework for challenging

the privileged status of historic nianhua and for moving the discussion towards the

contestations of meaning in Mianzhu’s contemporary nianhua industry. However, the

question remains of how to define the boundaries of this living archive? Where does it

begin and where does it end? What, finally, constitutes a work of nianhua? In a sense,

every chapter of this study has been probing this question, exploring the different realms

of ritual practice, narrativity, and folk art heritage to map out the actual terrain of nianhua

as they appear in their lived contexts. Although the term has come to include new media

and changing modes of display and use, the notion of “pursuing the auspicious, repelling

the portentous” is still a central defining feature that determines what is and isn’t suited

for display as nianhua. However, this notion is in itself open-ended and does not

necessarily signal a shared set of beliefs and values. Just the contrary, it is this openended

aspect of it that allows for competing discourses to come into play on a continual

basis.

While earlier studies by Wang Shucun and Bo Songnian have also cited “pursuing

the auspicious, repelling the portentous” as the defining feature of nianhua across time

and space, there has been no concerted effort to nuance and situate the concept as a site of

negotiation, contestation, and innovation at the local level. This is what sets this study

apart from the existing literature on nianhua, as the focus is on deconstructing nianhua

discourses to get at the local and regional specificities of how the concept is taken up and

deployed. As seen in Mianzhu, the local dialect names for the different items of ritual

ephemera are still in use alongside the state-led nianhua revival and its dissemination of

folk art discourses. Ritual practices for pursuing the auspicious and repelling the

portentous are still vibrant in everyday life just as museums and heritage sites are being

built to reconstruct the imagined world of nianhua’s rural past.

The big picture that emerges here is a veritable palimpsest of past and present

practices superimposed on each other and evolving in tandem so that it becomes quite

impossible to tease out the continuities and changes of the nianhua industry. Indeed both

past and present examples point to innovation, change, and reinvention as inherent

aspects of the nianhua industry in Mianzhu. The historic documents tied to Mianzhu’s

print trade reveal an industry that evolved continuously in response to the changing

politics and marketplace trends of the region. The early 20th century appropriation of

foreign novelties such as bicycles, umbrellas, and Western style fashion as auspicious

elements in Mianzhu nianhua speaks to the enduring association between auspiciousness

and all things fresh and “new,” especially in the context of the Lunar New Year rituals of

renewal.

The notion of a living archive speaks to this continual renewal of the industry, as

captured by the auspicious phrases, “out with the old, in with new” or “One loud burst of

the firecrackers to be rid of the old year, in with the new peach charms and out with the

old ones” 􀐕􁇰􁁂􀴲􀔢􀣸􀷟􀄑 􁈹􀏜􀾍􀸥􀟐􀣸􀚘. The “new nianhua” of the 1950s print

reforms and the “ nianhua revival” of the 1980s and 1990s are clearly appropriations of

the auspicious speech tied to the annual renewal of nianhua. Ironically, the state-led

efforts to renew nianhua have ended up constructing a rigid and fixed notion of nianhua

that is based on idealized images of the past.

Susan Sontag has described photography as the “ceaseless replacement of the

new” and Thomas Martin has described the Internet as a “living glossed manuscript, still

and indefinitely in the process of production.”338 Interestingly, these phrases can just as

easily describe the nianhua industry, which circulates fresh works every year. The

perpetual act of renewing nianhua in both production and consumption speaks to its

resistance to the archive; it can never be fully placed under “house arrest” or consecrated

to a final resting place in a protected archive as long the practices of renewal continues to

shape the industry.

These issues apply to the widespread resurgence of ritual life in China since the

1980s, which has coincided with an immense increase in ephemeral goods, of which

prints and paintings compose only a fraction. During ritual festivals and holidays, local

and regional markets are filled with paper sculptures, temporary altars, processional

objects, costumes, incense, lanterns, toys, and edible goods. The notion of “pursuing the

auspicious, repelling the portentous” is a central concern for many of these industries,

which have flourished and shaped daily life in China on a vast scale. It is a simple phrase

that is continually invested with new meaning and currency. The flexible and open-ended

338 Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 68; and Thomas R Martin, “Propagating

Classics” (lecture, annual meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 28, 1997).

nature of this concept is perhaps the vital key that has allowed many ritual practices to

continually adapt to a rapidly changing world.

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