Post-90s girl back to village to inherit tantou nianhua

Xiao Yangyi, a post-90s girl, resigns her job in city and returns to her hometown to inherit tantou nianhua from her mother, a inheritor of tantou nianhua.  (photo: Zeng Yong/Guangming Picture)

Tantou is famous for its New Year paintings, or nianhua: colourful, bold woodblock designs printed on paper and used to decorate homes and doorways during Spring Festival.

The paintings represent blessings for the coming year: babies are a common theme, as are good health, prosperity and marriage. Often, these are represented by symbols such as cranes, pine trees and peaches for longevity, dragons and phoenixes for good fortune, or lotus flowers and fish for wealth.