A happy life out of woodcuts

To let local farmers benefit from fast-growing cultural tourism, the Nakeli tourist village in Pu'er has offered out-of-print woodcut training courses to over 100 farmer artists. Gradually, the woodcut pictures that reflect local lifestyles were loved by more tourists, bringing extra income to local farmers.

A happy life out of woodcuts

At the out-of-print woodcut training center in the Nakeli village, southwest Yunnan’s Pu'er city, there hang farmers’ woodcuts with local features. The art pieces depict the beautiful Chinese frontier of Yunnan from different angles.

The out-of-print woodcut, with its full name being the woodcut picture from a coloured out-of-print mimeograph, originated in Pu'er in 1980s and then gained fame across China. Different from traditional woodcut prints, the out-of-print woodcut is to put together all colored mimeographs, re-engraving and rubbing on one board. Its creation is also natural destruction of the original picture, and the number of works that can be rubbed by one wooden board is limited.

To let local farmers benefit from fast-growing cultural tourism, Pu'er has, since 2018, offered out-of-print woodcut training courses to over 100 farmer artists. During the training periods, the government provided the trainees with free lodges, meals, tools and training materials.

"It’s quite beyond my parents that I could grow to be a painter." Bao Yancai, a 32-year-old man of the Wa people, is one of the trainees. Bao comes from the Xuelin village of Lancang county in Pu'er. Starting in primary school, Bao has been obsessed with painting, which made his parents worrisome. In their eyes, a farmer's son had no way out in painting.

In spite of objection from his parents, Bao Yancai still secretly painted in his childhood. As time went by, his painting skills became more exquisite, especially in the vivid description of characters. "No matter how good the painting is, it can only be a personal hobby," said the parents.

Having got married and given birth to a child in 2014, Bao Yancai no longer worked as a migrant worker, for he had to take care of his family in the mountainous border area. Working in the fields on the rolling mountains, Bao wielded the hoe hard, but there was not much income and poverty is as constant as the sunrise and sunset.

While Bao Yancai and his fellow farmers were learning out-of-print woodcuts, Nakeli, a key stop on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, ushered in a tourism boom, with local woodcut pictures gaining popularity among tourists. "Using the leisure time well, a farmer like me can create more than 10 editions of woodcut in a year,” said Bao. “Each edition will give birth to 10 pictures, so I can produce 100 woodcut pictures. With a picture costing 200 to 300 yuan, they would bring me an annual extra income of at least 20,000 yuan."

Now Bao is a famous painter in Lancang county. In addition to out-of-print woodcuts, he also creates wall paintings for village buildings, shops or restaurants, at a price of around 300 yuan per square meter. This brings him another income of 20,000 yuan per year. "Paintings by farmers may look clumsy in a way, but the touching works carry their sincere love for the hometown," said Zhang Xinlin, a tourist in Nakeli. He hoped that more people could know about these pastoral works, allowing local farmers to make a living by painting happily.

Reporting by Miao Chao and Luo Jie; CNS photos; Trans-editing by Wang Shixue