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A little girl says that she loves eating ice cream during Spring Festival and that’s why she painted a fairy for it.[Photo by Pan Qi] |
Just as the Kitchen God would report to the God of Heaven at the end of every year on what has been happening in the human realm, every god the children painted plays a specific role in a story. According to Hu, there are different steps to making wine; preparation, fermentation, blending and tasting. Every student in the team was therefore assigned a god to paint, with each of these gods representing one of the steps in the process.
“The character I drew is named ‘Yanrong’. His role is melting down the steel in the story of ‘Forging the Swords’. The other three members in our team drew characters for extinguishing the flames, hammering and refining,” said Bu Jiayou, a pupil in Grade 5.
The children learned the stories of Shan Hai Jing, a collection of mythical legends originally written over 4,000 years ago, and watched videos of Wen Na explaining how she creates a character before choosing stories such as “Making Wine” and “Forging the Swords”.
“Wen Na’s creations have bold personal styles and we hope the children can follow her lead and learn to express their personal preferences freely instead of following the standards set by teachers,” explained Zhao Kaixuan, a fellow teacher who is very patient and always encourages the children to paint in their own styles.
“It’s very difficult to paint this time. I don’t know what’s next. Sometimes I discuss my ideas with my teammates. I think the picture I painted is better,” said a boy with surname of Xuanxuan.
“We need to pass on traditional Chinese New Year culture. There are different kinds of gods in Chinese New Year paintings and they reveal the folk customs of each specific time period. So we rented a space at the Tao House in Yixing and organized this wall-painting activity for the children to learn more about our traditional culture”, said Xu Ping, who is a lover of folk art and is also a painting teacher.
“A commemorative album about how the New Year wall-paintings in Yixing were created will be published after the Spring Festival,” added Xu.
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The children’s New Year wall-paintings at Tao House in Yixing.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] |
