A traditional style nianhua, or New Year's picture, with an updated
theme: on the right, two actresses from a rural propaganda team prepare
for a performance of the Red Lantern model opera, with a peasant musician
and painter. On the left, a peasant agricultural research team shows
off the fruits of their labor. From working with and living among the
peasants in the 1930s, the Communists realized that adapting these popular,
brightly colored pictures would be one of the most effective ways of
reaching the often illiterate or semi-literature rural population. Images
of abundance, such as good harvests and fat, happy children, portending
a happy future, needed few adjustments to accord with the Party's message.
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