Central China's Henan Province is seeking to revive the once popular traditional Chinese folk art form of woodcut painting, said sources at a Lunar New Year pictures show hosted by the Henan Museum on Thursday.  

The provincial government of Henan has called the local woodcut painting popular in Zhuxian Town, Kaifeng, as the top folk art form to be revived in recent years.

More than 1,000 traditional woodcuts made by artists from Zhuxian have been found by the local government, including six from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and 23 from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The local government has outlined a series of measures to revive the art. Among these measures, a Chinese Woodcut Painting Museum and a training base will be built in Zhuxian, and more local woodcut-related stories will be collected. The protection project is expected to be completed by 2008.

The Chinese custom of sticking up pictures to celebrate the Spring Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year, was recorded in historical works of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Woodcut printing is one popular method in China to make the Lunar New Year's pictures.

With a history of over 800 years, Zhuxian woodcut painting is as famous as the Yangliuqing woodblock painting in north China's Tianjin, the Taohuawu Lunar New Year's pictures in east China's Suzhou and the woodcut painting in China's kite capital, Weifang.

Since the 1980s, however, the diminishing woodcut paintings can only be found in the homes of researchers or collectors or in remote villages, with fewer and fewer artists left in the workshops.

(Xinhua News Agency February 19, 2005)