"Twelve Screens" by Qing Dynasty painter Xu Gu was created in 1884. The animals on the screen have different expressions, and different plant backgrounds are constructed according to the animal shapes. The picture is fresh, cold and full of changes.
In 1944, Qi Baishi spent four years completing the ink painting "Twelve Genres". He said in the postscript, "Mr. Hao San has a large collection of paintings from me, and he also wants to retrieve twelve paintings. There are some that he has never seen before. Dragon cannot be painted, so he rejects them. Mr. Fu ordered the factory to retrieve two or three paintings in one year." It took four years of hard work to put the paper together," which became a popular story.
In the winter of 1945, Xu Beihong created the "Twelve Zodiac Album" in Panxi, Chongqing. He painted rats, snakes, dragons, dogs, etc. that he had rarely or never painted before. This picture is ink and color on paper, with accurate animal shapes and elegant colors. In 2014, it was sold at the Kuangshi Autumn Auction in Beijing for 46 million yuan.
Contemporary Chinese painter Fan Zeng's "Twelve Zodiac Pictures" borrows zodiac allusions to depict ancient Chinese characters in white using his good lines. This painting was sold at the 2004 autumn auction of Rongbaozhai in Beijing for 3.74 million yuan. In the Sui Dynasty, zodiac patterns began to be applied to bronze mirrors. The zodiac is the main pattern, usually arranged in twelve grids, each grid has an animal pattern, often surrounded by the four gods of green dragon, white tiger, red bird, and Xuanwu, or auspicious animals, twining flowers, and Bagua symbols, and the outer edge is usually a zigzag pattern. Since then, there have been bronze mirrors cast with zodiac patterns in all dynasties.
Tao Gu's "Qing Yilu·Utensils" of the Song Dynasty records the twelve o'clock plate: "There is a plate in the Tang library, which is yellow in color, three feet round, and surrounded by objects. In the Yuan Dynasty, I used it occasionally, and I felt Things change from time to time. For example, at the time of day, dragons play among the flowers and plants. At the turn of the hour, they become snakes, and at the turn of the day, they become horses." The twelve animal heads in the Old Summer Palace were designed by the foreign court painter Lang Shining and the French missionary Chiang Anren during the Qianlong period, integrating Chinese and Western zodiac animal images. For example, the cow's head is different from the traditional Chinese image of a bull, and draws on the image of Spanish bullfighting; the king character on the forehead of the tiger's head represents the traditional Chinese tiger pattern, but the tiger's head, which looks slightly like a lion, is the European image of a tiger.
The bronze statues of twelve animal heads are located on the 12 stone platforms of the fan-shaped fountain in front of Haiyan Hall. On the south bank are rats, tigers, dragons, horses, monkeys, and dogs; on the north bank are cows, rabbits, snakes, sheep, chickens, and pigs. The portraits all have animal heads and human bodies, with a copper head and a stone body. The hollow is connected to a water pipe. Every other hour, the portrait of the person at that hour sprays water from its mouth; at noon, the twelve bronze statues fountain at the same time. This set of animal heads is actually a giant water-powered clock.
After the British and French forces burned down the Old Summer Palace, the bronze statue of the animal head was lost overseas. In 2000, at an auction in Hong Kong, ox, tiger and monkey heads appeared, and the twelve animal heads became symbols of the lost overseas cultural relics in the Yuanmingyuan. After many efforts, as of 2014, 7 animal heads including ox, monkey, tiger, pig, horse, rat and rabbit have returned to China; it is said that the dragon head is in Taiwan, and 4 snake, chicken, dog and sheep heads have been returned to China. The whereabouts of the animal head are still unknown. The twelve zodiac New Year pictures are closely related to the annual festivals. Some of them are also almanacs and have become symbols of joy and auspiciousness. There are zodiac New Year paintings with full paintings, and there are also paintings with only the zodiac of that year. The New Year painting "Lotus Births a Noble Son" by Wuqiang, Hebei Province in the Qing Dynasty, the continuous children surrounded by the body means "continuous birth of a noble son", and the zodiac signs surrounding the zodiac sign hope that the zodiac signs will gather together, and more children will bring blessings.
The four major folk New Year paintings—Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Yangjiabu in Shandong, Taohuawu in Suzhou, and Mianzhu in Sichuan—all have zodiac themes. The Qing Dynasty Yangliuqing painting has a set of four screens, showing twelve ladies watching the twelve zodiac animals, one for each. There are also zodiac New Year paintings in Yangjiabu, Shandong Province, showing twelve babies holding twelve animals. There is no tradition of zodiac New Year pictures in Taohuawu, Suzhou, but in 2006, the Taohuawu Woodcut New Year Picture Society produced the New Year picture "Golden Pig Auspicious" for the first time. Folk paper-cutting is a flat shape with distinctive local characteristics. There are four main forms of zodiac-themed paper-cutting: first, independent zodiac shapes, such as the annual New Year celebrations; second, auspicious combinations of zodiac signs, such as "snake and rabbit"; third, combination of zodiac animals and characters, such as a mouse marrying a girl; The zodiac signs gather together. The four compositions all reflect the zodiac characteristics of animals and are different from ordinary animal themes.
Due to differences in customs, different places have different emphasis on the same theme of paper-cutting. For example, "a mouse marries a girl". Shandong places emphasis on clear lines, while Shaanxi places emphasis on liveliness and celebration.
Qi Xiuhua from Gaomi, Shandong, whose works go beyond flatness to present a three-dimensional sense, represented by the 1997 "Golden Ox Hooves" and was selected for zodiac stamps; Yan'an master Bai Fenglian's realistic zodiac series of paper-cuts; Dou Ma from Hebi City The representative work of Dou Guishu of Zhuangcun is "Mixed Fifty Double Happiness and Twelve Zodiac Signs"... The world's first zodiac stamp was the Year of the Tiger stamp issued in Japan in 1950. The pattern adopts the "Tiger Picture" of Maruyama Yingju. Hong Kong and Taiwan issued zodiac stamps for the first time in 1967 and 1968 respectively.
Mainland China issued its first zodiac stamp on February 15, 1980. The first monkey stamp had a face value of 0.08 yuan. The pattern was created by the painter Huang Yongyu and was a naive little monkey. The stamp was designed by Shao Bolin to celebrate the auspicious occasion. The base is red, and the monkey face is painted with gold powder and overprinted with shadow carving. The circulation of this monkey ticket is only 5 million. As of 2015, the market value of a single ticket is 12,000 yuan, and the full version is worth millions.
The first round of zodiac stamps (1980-1991) alternated between colorful and white decorative patterns, and later adopted the method of open collection of patterns and anonymous selection. The second round of stamps (1992-2003) has two stamps, one is a folk craft with the image of the zodiac, the other is a Chinese zodiac calligraphy, a variety of folk arts such as paper-cutting, New Year pictures, clay sculptures, cloth art, shadow puppets, etc., as well as different Calligraphy style is incorporated into it. The third round (2003-2015) was restored to 1 piece, with a rectangular specification, adopting more modern design concepts, fashionable expression techniques, and obvious cartoon style, but drawing on traditional tones and folklore to varying degrees. The fourth round of Monkey Tickets was released in 2016 and was once again designed by Huang Yongyu.
Western countries also issue zodiac stamps. In 1993, the U.S. Postal Service issued the first set of zodiac stamps to commemorate the contributions of the Chinese to the United States. As of 2008, 82 countries and regions had issued zodiac stamps. Zodiac stamps make the ancient Chinese zodiac culture truly international. The twelve zodiac signs are cast into coins, which are used to obtain good luck and avoid evil. They are also called life coins and money coins. They are mostly minted by the people and not officially circulated. In ancient times, children were given life money when they were born. It became popular in the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China.
The front side of the zodiac money has the zodiac pattern, or the words of the earthly branches, and the back side is mostly accompanied by Bagua, star palaces and auspicious words. Some coins have a zodiac sign, mostly the zodiac sign of the wearer; some coins have all the zodiac signs...
Modern zodiac coins are also issued. In 2003, the People's Bank of China issued for the first time a 1-yuan zodiac New Year commemorative coin in circulation. The front side shows the denomination and year, and the back side has a festive pattern of children playing, reflecting the year's zodiac through clothing or toys. For example, the 2003 sheep coin shows a child holding a sheep. It is shaped like a lantern to welcome the spring, and the coins are printed with the stems and branches of the current year. Starting from 2015, the denomination of the second round of zodiac coins in circulation was changed to 10 yuan, and the designs were all pure zodiac images.