Chinese New Year Poster

When the chill north wind is blowing hard, and winter is at its most powerful, it is also the time that the Chinese New Year draws in. Folks will make lots of preparations such as repainting the walls white, making new clothes, and cooking big meals for the New Year's eve. One of the prevailing customs is buying and posting New Year pictures, especially in the countryside of North China. Some red lanterns hanging from the eaves and the auspicious New Year poster inside the room can best describe the festive atmosphere.
The New Year poster, as a special type of art, enjoys a long history and far-reaching influence. Many artists are  farmers who express their good wishes and future dreams in the poster. It also reflects their ideal life and artistic taste.
The most well-known poster is called 'having grain to spare for years coming.' There is a lovely smiling boy sitting in front of some lotus flowers and holding a big carp in his arms. In Chinese, lotus is homonymic with "consecutive," and fish with having something more than enough. Chinese consider this picture a good omen for the coming year. And it is so widly spread that it almost becomes a representative work of the New Year poster. There is also an interesting story about it. In the Qing Dynasty once a rich man passed by the Poplar and Willow Green County on a boat. He was fascinated by the vivid poster and bought one home. At night the boy turned alive, and came down from the picture, giving him a big carp as gift. But the man was so greedy that he placed a large basin before the poster and wanted to make a fortune from it. Later the boy grew tired of him and went back to his hometown with his carp, leaving the poster a piece of white paper.
The New Year poster also develops with time and becomes an exquisite decoration nowadays. Not only do people buy them as gifts, but tourists take them home as souvenirs as well.