Once upon a time, a sign of grassroots democracy loomed large on the horizon of China, not only in politics, in the workplace, but in cultural practice as well.
Before the forced dismantling of the commune system (公社) in the early 1980s, which witnessed the Chinese peasants returning to a thousands-year-old way of family farming, cultural activities among organised peasants were encouraged and thus thrived in all areas, including literature, opera and arts.
The paintings displayed here were created by some untrained female peasants from Jiangsu Province in the eastern coastal area of China, reflecting daily village lives before the 1980s.
A Rice Production Team
Rice is the staple food for Chinese in southern regions. For thousands of years, the Chinese were known as the masters in producing nutritious and delicious organic rice of all kinds.
The painting depicts a production team (生产队) working cooperatively on a three-stage husk-removing job: grains are first placed in a circular mill that is ground by a man on the left, then passed to a hand-operated device managed by a man standing on the top right to separate the rice from husks, finally a woman in the bottom right make the rice go through a circular sieve to be piled on the ground.
While the commune system has now been trashed like husks, the rice plantation in China is taking a great leap backward where U.S. multinational-controlled GM seeds have been stealthily sold to some Chinese peasants to produce rice, tragically.
This painting was created by a middle-aged peasant woman named Zhang Yuanying.
Bride of a Chinese Peasant
When a female member of a village production team meets a guy from the same production team or from a different production team nearby or far away and decides to marry him, she becomes a permanent member of his generation-mixed family.
Still in her wedding appearance of a cherry headdress and a pink jacket and red trousers and scarlet shoes, she sits in front of a large loom to demonstrate her cloth weaving skills.
Until a couple of decades ago, some Chinese peasants were still wearing clothes made of textiles produced at home, often in checked or striped patterns with colours ranging from red, pink, orange, green, blue, and brown to black.
The artist, a peasant woman named Yao Zhenzhu, illustrates village life in vivid detail: The mother-in-law is scattering grains to feed the chickens who enjoy total freedom of running around, while a little human in the background has been confined to a basket for the safety reasons. But the joy of the freedom activists could be short-lived – when Chinese New Year arrives the chickens might all be made into dishes, while the baby, on the other hand, will grow up and come out of the confinement and become the master of the household.
The lesson: Earn your own place in your world through hard work and positive contribution, since freedom under the mercy of alien masters is a fable and forever ends tragically.
The Birth of a Baby
Following the birth of a baby, a new world is created, not by any god, but by the baby itself, with the help of all beings and non-beings related to it, especially its mother. If babies arrive in this world with a synopsis of the storyline composed in their previous lives, their mothers are the brave publishers, who published the books that are yet to be fully written.
Still, in her pink jacket and a green headband (all Chinese mothers used to wear a cotton headband after giving birth to a baby as a measure to prevent wind penetration through the naked head), the bride is now making a public presentation of the book she published a month ago, with her mother-in-law acting as her publishing agent.
The reason for her to postpone the book review is rather straightforward. According to Chinese custom, an open celebration of a brand new life should only take place a month later, so as to allow the baby to thrive and the mother to recover without disturbance.
On the one-month anniversary (满月), a banquet is arranged and, in the old days, the title of the book would be formally assigned only by then, often according to the suggestion of a yin-yang master who checked the Five Agents in the baby’s birth chart and came up with one or two characters that could address the imbalance between the agents.
During the celebration, while men toast in the front yard or front rooms, the women relatives and female villagers have the privilege to visit the publishing house – the bedroom – and give a close review of the new publication which, on this occasion, is in a yellow cotton package and held in the arms of the proud publishing agent.
One thing to bear in mind is no one should ever visit the new mother and her product empty-handed. So in the painting, we see everyone bringing something with them, even the little girl in yellow pants carries a fish (somehow in a peculiar blue colour). The most notable gift left by the visitors is a basketful of eggs dyed in red – a special blessing food for the occasion.
Then it is the nappies. Nappies in checked patterns of blue and white are everywhere: being washed by the sister-in-law, being laid out to dry on benches and on chicken coop …
China’s traditional reproduction culture based on highly advanced Chinese medicine theory and practice has for thousands of years ensured the Chinese nation became the most populous people on Earth and Chinese civilisation kept progressing from ancient times to the present day. The painting produced by Cao Yinying, who herself was a peasant’s wife and a mother, wonderfully illustrates the event taking place in the bedroom during the One Month celebration.
Spring Clear Up
After a one-month break by resting in bed (坐月子), the new mother is ready to return to work.
The very first task she takes is to clean the mess in her house. So our heroine walks into the sun and washes clothes in a round wooden pen and hangs them out on bamboo poles to dry.
She has arranged her laundry in an orderly fashion to make sure all receive maximum sun exposure without getting in each other’s way. Perching at the top positions are a child’s woollen cap and a pair of woman’s shoes, while down the middle on branches two baby’s animal figureheads find their cozy spots.
Along the poles, reusable nappies in assorted patterns and colours are displayed like flags at the UN headquarters, and on a low bench, a row of cotton shoes for different seasons are placed in pairs.
Spring is clearly in the air. It’s a great window opportunity for tidying up the domestic mess.
This watercolour painting was created by Zhang Yuanying, also a peasant artist from Jiangsu.
An Outdoor Textile Workshop and a Childcare Centre
Having placed the domestic system in good order, it’s time for economic development and living standard improvement.
Our heroine, the new mother, now puts on a uniform and sets up a multi-discipline business: a textile workshop and a childcare centre.
Her working environment is truly green (under a leafy tree) and her industry is even greener (zero energy consumption and carbon emission). She spins cotton yarn onto spools by hand and hangs the spools on a tree branch (utilizing infrastructure facilities provided by Nature), and her baby is entertained by a tasselled paper fish, that is motioned by wind energy, from its comfortable seat in a wicker basket, which attracts birds to establish their chick care centre on the upper floor, and butterflies dance to the tune of birds’ concert.
This painting was produced by peasant woman Zhu Suzhen.
On the Days Leading up to the Chinese New Year
The dawn of the Chinese Year December 23 proclaims the food preparation for New Year’s Eve dinner has formally begun.
In the old days, it was a time to kiss goodbye to Kitchen God who was scheduled to take a brief business trip plus annual leave to his native celestial motherland and would only return shortly before the Chinese New Year to his post (literally) that was stuck on the supporting wall of the brick stove. Of course, nowadays, no one knows where his office is since his portrait no longer appears in Chinese kitchens. Still, Chinese people take this moment seriously and regard it as the Minor Chinese New Year.
Traditionally from this day on, tuanzi (团子) clubs would begin to hold annual gatherings. The clubs normally accept female members only, albeit sometimes some young boys also get a chance to join the ranks.
Tuanzi is a popular snack in southern China and is customarily consumed on reunion occasions, serving, typically, as New Year’s Day breakfast and as the entree or the snack after a Lantern Festival dinner (on the first full moon night of the Chinese year). Tuanzi, made in sticky rice, can come in two forms: those in a round snowball shape are stuffed with sesame paste, while those with a sharp top have a salty taste, either stuffed with pork mince or a mixture of white radish shred and deep-fried lard.
The core members of the tuanzi clubs were usually made by mature women who had years of working experience in tuanzi production, with unseasoned young girls as their disciples and assistants. In some close-knit communities, like small villages, on the days leading up to the New Year, the clubs would hold daily tuanzi workshops from one household to another, making this complicated annual household chore one of the most enjoyable and memorable affairs in the whole festival.
The collective endeavour within Chinese families and Chinese communities as such has, for thousands of years, helped strengthen family relationships and community bonds. Hopefully, such spirit will recover soon and continue to flourish for thousands of years to come.
The peasant artist who created this painting is Zhang Fengying.