It has long been a tradition for Chinese people to plaster their walls and adorn their doors with New Year paintings depicting babies, money, gods and other symbols considered to represent good fortune.

In Foshan, however, New Year paintings have developed differently. Rather than print the flamboyant designs onto paper, locals there prefer to meticulously carve them onto blocks of wood.

Early in the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1386), Foshan and Guangzhou people started celebrating the festival by carving gods (menshen in Chinese) onto the two wings of a door. The carvings of various incarnations of gods were thought to provide protection for families and evade disasters.

The carving tradition developed over time, eventually adapting to the introduction of mass production, where paintings depicting the prosperous reigns of emperors Qianlong and Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1711-1820) were copied onto wooden pieces.

The folk art carries different meanings to people. Some hang the wood carvings to pray, while others prefer to use them simply as decorations and an ode to tradition.

The industry went into a slump since the 1930s and production was forced to stop in Foshan during the period of 1966 to 1975 as the carvings were dismissed as feudal superstition products.

Nowadays the customs of decorating doors with New Year paintings mainly exist in rural areas and there are fewer inheritors of the Foshan folk craft.