In contrast to the carvers, printers, and those trained in the final stages of coloring

and painting, nianhua designers are primarily recognized for their ability to design and

paint many different kinds of ritually efficacious images. In this context, Wang Zhengfa’s

“Plowing and Weaving Pictures” can be understood as a display of his mastery of the

brush in both painting and calligraphy. In particular, it showcases his ability to paint a

wide range of figures, including men, women, and children engaged in many different

activities of daily life and labor. As Wang Xingru explains, their family lineage

specializes in figural painting: “We specialized in painting figures, which in the past were

called gongbi pictures. We painted deities for home altars, such as the deity of the home,

188 For this study, I consulted a complete painted version of the Kangxi “Plowing and Weaving Pictures”

held in the Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, Canada, with forty-six leaves of paintings in two albums.

These works are dated to the late eighteenth century or later.

108

Guanyin, Zhongkui, the Wealth Deity, the Eight Immortals, the Sixteen Arhats, Eighteen

Lohans, and the Twenty Four Filial Acts.”189

Wang’s grandfather painstakingly rendered the complete set of 46 prints of

Kangxi’s “Plowing and Weaving Pictures” into a set of paintings by laying thin paper

over the prints then copying the lines with brush and ink. In contrast to the original prints,

Wang’s painted copy bears the delicate nuances of Wang’s energetic brushwork. If one

compares a scene from Kangxi’s prints to Wang’s version, it is possible to see how the

brushwork comes to the fore in Wang’s copy. In Kangxi’s version, the last scene in a

series of plowing images depicts a family making sacrificial offerings to the deity of

agriculture (fig. 34). It is a hand colored woodblock print reproduced after a painting by

Jiao Bingzhen 􀢊􀑥􁆋, who was commissioned by Kangxi to design the entire set. Not

shown in this image are Kangxi’s calligraphic verses added to the top of the page. In

Wang Zhengfa’s traced version of this same scene, the calligraphy along the top is also

absent although the calligraphy inside the frame of the picture is faithfully reproduced

(fig. 35). It is not clear whether the version he was tracing included the calligraphy.

In contrast to the Kangxi version, Wang’s copy only includes the outlines of the

image, leaving out the shading and the coloring. Wang’s hand painted lines stand out

against the background, with each brushstroke visible on the surface of the delicate paper.

In comparing the minute details of the altar, straw roofing, and fencing, Wang’s version

bears fewer lines to mark out a textured surface in an abbreviated manner. The short grass

and vines growing at the edges of the walls are only indicated by a few dots, delineating

the compositional space these details would occupy if one were to paint them in with

color. It is possible that these works were painted as designs to be carved into

189 Wang Xingru in discussion with the author, Mianzhu, Sichuan, June 2006.

109

woodblocks, although the lengthy collection of 46 images would have made this a very

expensive and laborious task. It is more likely that Wang’s painted version served as a

painting model, to be reproduced as paintings within the family workshop. Passed down

through the family and copied by each lineage holder, the work becomes a vehicle for

transmitting and performing the embodied mastery of the brush.

Copying lineage paintings is thus a means of attaining certain skills and

displaying one’s accomplishment. According to Wang, his father decided to train him in

the family profession instead of sending him to school:

I learned the art at the age of eleven. It wasn’t possible for my family to continue

my education, and my father had a lot of work to do. There were often people

coming over to rush him in his work, there was so much work and not enough

people to do it. So he asked me to start working. That’s how I learned to

paint.190

Thus instead of attending school, Wang learned how to read from his grandfather, who

was going blind at the time: “When I was learning to paint, his eyes could no longer see.

If I didn’t recognize a character, I’d write it on the palm of his hand with my finger. Then

he’d tell me how to read the character.”191 Sparked by our viewing of his grandfather’s

painting, Wang’s recollected memories reveal how he learned to read and write by

copying characters onto his grandfather’s palm. This intimate act speaks to the

significance of copying in ways that are not recorded on paper but only in memory. These

forms of copying are as important as the ones that leave physical traces and speak to a

kind of on-going transmission of knowledge through touch and observation.

190 Ibid.

191 Ibid.

110

Scholars of Chinese art and drama have emphasized certain difference between

the Chinese concept of mo 􀬄 (usually translated as “imitate” or “copy”) and the Western

notion of mimesis, which is usually associated with a likeness or semblance in outward

form. In his study of mo in Chinese drama, Chen has noted, “To understand the Chinese

concept of mo, one must also understand the Chinese concept of aesthetic truth,

especially theatrical truth. Revealed in all major traditional Chinese arts, such as painting

and drama, is the idea that aesthetic truth is not empirical. Rather, truth lies beyond mere

superficial likeness.”192 Citing drama critics from the Yuan dynasty to present day, Chen

argues that mo is “closer in meaning to the words ‘revelation’ or ‘display’ than to

‘imitation’ or ‘duplication.’”193 Chen’s retranslation here sheds light on the Wang

family’s “Plowing and Weaving Pictures,” which are not simply replicas of Kangxi’s

prints but transformed copies that also reveal and display the genealogical marks of the

family lineage.

In examining the Wang family genealogy chart and lineage paintings, it is

possible to see a complex form of shared authorship that is continually shaped by each

lineage holder. Wang Xingru situates his own works within a collection of works

produced by his forefathers, thus lending authority to his own paintings as transmissions

of a living lineage. Wang Xingru’s brushwork simultaneously bears the mark of his

ancestors as well as his own. It is possible to understand the Wang family paintings as

produced by the individual as well as the lineage since these two categories are mutually

inclusive rather than exclusive. This point challenges the idea that a collectively produced

work takes creative agency out of the hands of the individual artisan by pointing to a

192 Jingsong Chen, “To Make People Happy, Drama Imitates Joy: The Chinese Theatrical Concept of Mo,”

Asian Theater Journal 4, no. 1 (1997), 43.

193 Ibid., 40.

111

conceptual framework that simultaneously embraces individual and multiple authors. It

should be kept in mind that the “individuation” of knowledge as described by Foucault in

his famous essay “What is an Author?” did not develop in China to the same degree as it

did throughout the history of modern Europe.194 In the context of a painting lineage, the

creative process is not necessarily bounded by an individual “creator” but may be

considered part of genealogical continuum. In the case of nianhua, it is the authority and

supporting context of the shared lineage that supports an individual’s creative

contributions to the profession. As Wang’s paintings show, the copied mark straddles

continuity and change as variations are creatively exploited. In the words of Wen Fong,

these traces are “forever ancient and forever new.”195

Wang’s lineage box also contains sketches from his ancestors, however the ones

he showed us were his own contributions to the collection. Drawing out a thick stack of

small-scale sketches, Wang laid out on the table various religious motifs, intricate

patterns, auspicious creatures, cloud designs, rebuses, and written characters. Many of

these sketches had written notes on them, such as notations on color, size proportions,

and explanatory comments on the ritual significance of specific details (fig. 36). These

sketches serve as a visual compendium of design concepts for producing ritually

efficacious objects, including prints, paintings, sculptures, architectural components,

temple murals, and coffins. Accrued over many generations, the sketches betray the

profound wealth of ritual knowledge maintained in the family profession. They also

illustrate how certain designs could be used in different configurations and in different

media, generating a virtually limitless range of possibilities for the designer to explore.

194 Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author,” in Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon

Books, 1970).

195 Fong, “Why Chinese Painting is History,” 262.

112

For instance, in a scroll painting known as Double Longevity 􀶠􀵰, auspicious patterns

from Wang’s sketches are incorporated into many aspects of the image (fig. 37). The

painting, which depicts a pair of male and female longevity deities, is designed to be a

birthday gift to be given to an elder. According to Wang, this painting is an appropriate

gift to present to one’s parents in their older age. Both deities are depicted only if both the

mother and father are alive, otherwise only the female deity is presented to the mother or

the male deity to the father. The female goddess of longevity and the protector of elderly

women is the immortal Magu 􀪐􀜜, who is often distinguished by her youthful

appearance, long nails, and her basket of gourds, fruits, and flowers swung over her

shoulder on a pole. Her child attendant carries two peaches of immortality in a basket on

his back. Standing beside them is the god of longevity, Shouxing 􀵰􀾒 or Nanji Shouxing

􀬲􀠞􀵰􀾒, who carries a knotted staff with a gourd that contains life-sustaining water and