Note: This is a painting produced in the last fifty years by an artist who is presumably still alive. I do not have copyright in any way over this artist’s work. I’m reproducing it here because (a) these images are of ethnographic interest, (b) I’d hope that shining more light on contemporary mural and scroll painters will ultimately be good for their trade, and (c) frankly, these people seem unlikely to sue me. To that last point: It’s possible to commission images from contemporary village painters. If you’re interested, email me and I’d be happy to give you the contact information of several painters we met.

Structure Type: Village screens 村口影壁.

Location: These come from several different villages on the plain south of Datong City 大同市, which has a complex gerrymandering of county lines; most of these are within the jurisdiction of Yunzhou District 雲州區.

Period: These ornamental screens are set at the entrances to village main-streets. Most of these seem to have been put up with poverty alleviation 脫貧 / Moderately Prosperous Society 小康社會 / New Socialist Policies 新社會主義政策 projects in the 2010s. I actually visited several villages where the work of installing these screens and the attendant hedgerows, ornamental boulders, etc. was ongoing.

Artist: Unknown.

Mural Contents: Most of these images belong to the genre that I’ve been calling “The Great Golden Road” 金光大道, after the inscription on one such screen. Other screens are titled “The Golden Bridge, the Road of Prosperity” 金橋富路 or “A Prosperous Home” 富貴家園. These images show a wide, beautiful road receding off into the distance, implying the prosperous Socialist future to come. These screens are characterized by a glossy color scheme and an eclectic assemblage of structures, photoshopped together from images of traditional Chinese society and the modern West. Quite pointedly, these screen images also literally conceal view of the main streets of the present villages. Despite the seemingly strange and propagandistic nature of these images, they are now undeniably an important aspect of the visual culture of rural China in the 21st century. Moreover, there is a long tradition of village-screen muraling that is now almost entirely lost. In these 21st century images, the pictorial elements of architectural eclecticism and perspectival recession come straight out of the late-imperial village imaginary.

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