Abstract
Abstract The paper outlines the social forces influencing continuity or innovation in the traditional arts of Shandong Province, China. These are addressed under five headings: The relative flexibility of material media The gender based transmission of skills Male: Chayanov and craft production for the market during the slack agricultural season: Woodblock printing, toy-making, funeral models, ancestral and household shrine painting. Innovations take the form of new subjects, introduced to attract new buyers Female: cotton weaving, embroidery, paper cutting. Most of the villages we’ve worked in still practice village exogamy (despite the law of 1950 banning compulsory exogamy), so that women take skills with them when they marry, whereas men’s skills remain in their village of birth. Combined with the purpose of production: Male arts primarily produced for market, with 100s of years of market tradition Female arts primarily for domestic consumption (although surplus cotton cloth has long been traded to increase family income), among which the daughter’s trousseau is an important component. Disruption caused by the mid-20th century ‘social movements’ caused an enforced break in almost all crafts. The acceptability of the arts to the intended audience (new but traditional themes in toys and woodblocks), and the movement toward fine art.
Highlights
Redfield characterised peasant communities as ‘part societies’
We may be able to see a sort of link or hinge between the local life of a peasant society and the state or feudal system of which it is a part.’
The traditional arts of Shandong Province rely on a centuries old artistic tradition, shared throughout Han culture, to express concepts, hopes and aspirations, using well-known symbols: the peach and peony, the many seeds of lotus and pomegranate, bamboo and homophones for valued states such as affluence and peace
Summary
Redfield characterised peasant communities as ‘part societies’. He wrote (1960: 27): ‘a peasant society is two connecting halves. We asked, ‘Why would you allow your daughter to take blocks with her when she married?’ Mr Yang replied, ‘Because she’s my daughter, and I can’t refuse’ He further explained that the workshop might have several versions of the same theme, so could spare some blocks to be taken away, and because this helps the craft to be passed on. While our brief survey was certainly not exhaustive it is clear that different family workshops have created different variants on the classic theme of the Door Gods (illustration 3) This would be readily explicable if only members of the male line in each family carved the woodblocks they use, since Mrs Wang Aihua (wife of Yang Sui-pe ) told us that new blocks can be carved using prints from a worn-out set of blocks as the template.
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