Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

III. Far East, South and South-East Asia / Дальний Восток, Южная и Юго-Восточная Азия 616 Proceedings of the International Congress on Historiography and Source Studies of Asia and Africa.Vol. I. 2020 (holding a pagoda), who hated his son Nezha; he is shown below Zhao Gongming on a horse, aiming his spear at Nezha. Wen Taishi 聞太師 is watching the battle from the tower. Workshop markings are missing; in colouring and stylistics, the picture is equivalent to the woodblock print MAE No. 675–48/19 from the workshop “Dongdaxing ji” 東大興記 1 . Conclusion Woodblock prints nianhua from the fund No. 675 were produced in the workshops of Wuqiang county in Hebei Province — one of the largest nianhua production centres in northern China. Wang Shucun states that pictures fromWuqiang were sold in the northern provinces of Shanxi, Hebei, Chahar 察哈爾 and probably also got to north-eastern outskirts, where they could be acquired by a traveler from Russia Leopold Schrenk. In his study of theatre woodblock prints, Wang Shucun emphasises that there were close ties between Wuqiang county and the largest northern centre of popular woodblock prints production inYangliuqing. This was due to geographic proximity of these two centres and popularity of woodblock prints fromYangliuqing. Wang Shucun states that craftsmen from Wuqiang often went to Yangliuqing to earn a living as seasonal workers; boards from Yangliuqing were taken to Wuqiang and were finished there, and this explains compositional and thematic similarity of prints from the two centres (Wang Shucun 1992b:86). Some items from Schrenk’s collection in MAE RAS also contain the word ‘Yangliuqing’ in the names of the shops (e.g. MAE No.675–48/11, MAE No.675–48/13). Craftsmen probably hoped that prints with the mark of Yangliuqing would sell better. Wang Shucun points out a special feature of the prints with drama plots from Wuqiang: one scene was rarely cut on a single board, a sheet looked like a ‘book in pictures’ with several scenes put in rows. A specific feature of the drama prints fromWuqiang is that the scenes are presented not as a stage performance, but in the natural setting. Another characteristic feature of the theatre pictures from Wuqiang is numeration of scenes, short descriptions and the names of characters written near the figures, which intensifies the narrative function of the image. Several prints from Schrenk’s collection are made in the same colour palette and similar artistic manner but in different workshops. Catalogues with drama woodblock prints edited byWang Shucun (1992, 2006) contain boards dating from the late Qing and the beginning of the Republican 1 The catalogue of the State Hermitage collection features a woodblock print with the scene “Battle at Nine Bends of the Yellow River” 九曲黃河陣 (Museum No. LT-6461) from Yangliuqing with the scene where three sisters avenge their brother Zhao Gongming, also an illustration to a chapter from the novel “The Investiture of the Gods”. (RudovaM. L. Kitaiskaya narodnaya kartina nianhua iz sobraniya Gosudarstvenogo Ermitazha. [Folk Pictures Nianhua from the State Hermitage Collection]. P. 184).