I just learned that Tang Sancai is the product of the development period of the Tang Dynasty in Luoyang, and although the product of the same period "mud goo" is not in Luoyang, Luoyang, as the "ancient capital of the thirteen dynasties", will naturally spread in the hands of the people in the city.

Junxian mud goo is the materialized form of primitive bird worship in the Central Plains, is a derivative of agricultural civilization and folk culture, it began in ancient times, flourished in the Sui and Tang dynasties, its shape is smaller, the big one is less than 20 cm, the small one is only 4 to 5 cm, because it has two small holes in the tail, it makes a "coo" sound when blowing, and the name of the mud coo comes from this.

Liyang Town, Yang Yuantun is the main production area of Jun County, and its main works include historical figures, opera characters, twelve genera, small animals, birds, horseback riders, etc.

The origin of mud gugu can be traced back to the era of the Five Emperors, when people began to use clay molding, which can basically be regarded as the earliest origin of mud gugu in Jun County, and then it developed spontaneously among the people.

During the Han Dynasty, Jun County already had folk artists who specialized in making mud goo, and began the pottery technology of mud goo (the original pottery process began to be applied in clay toys), and similar clay toy images appeared in the portrait stone carvings at that time.

The period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties was the formative period of the temple fair in Jun County, and the mud gugu became a kind of folk arts and crafts with local characteristics in the temple fair.

During the Sui and Tang dynasties, in the battle of Liyangcang in Daqiao Mountain, due to the death of many good horses in the Wagang army, and the fatigue of the soldiers, Xu Maogong was ordered by Li Mi to stick to Liyangcang, and his subordinate Yang Ji set up a village in the Yellow River Jindi (now Yang Jitun area) to contain the tired and sick soldiers, and the troops reclaimed the fields and recuperated.

In addition to the crops, the soldiers and the local people with clay sculpture skills dug the Yellow River clay, kneaded clay figures and mud horses, and remembered the sacrificed soldiers. At that time, a large number of Sui and Tang Dynasty character modeling and military-themed works appeared in Junxian Nigugu.

The Song Dynasty was the period when Chinese porcelain art reached maturity, and it was also a glorious period for the development of Chinese ceramics.

During the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the scale of the temple fair continued to expand, and Nigugu was inherited and developed with the help of the ancient temple fair in Jun County, and became a commodity with the characteristics of folk art.

According to the subject matter and type, Junxian mud goo is divided into four categories: birds, animals, people, and scenery, with more than 100 varieties, and the works of various themes have their own characteristics.

In addition to turtle doves and swallows, there are also roosters, peacocks, phoenixes, geese, mandarin ducks, etc. The small ones are between square inches, and the large ones are as high as centimeters, and the shape is concise and plump, simple and vivid.

Animal works include not only lions, monkeys, horses, cows, dogs, tigers, but also unicorns and unicorns. The modeling technique is concise, the style is simple, vivid and expressive.

Character works are rough and simple, rigorous in modeling techniques, advocating realism, and most of them are historical heroes, or typical characters in classical literature, or anthropomorphic zodiac signs. According to the personality characteristics of different characters, the artists use concise and summarized expression techniques, and the form of expression is "dense and sparse", "high and low", there are changes, some exaggerated, the small sees the big, and pays attention to the image characteristics and the shaping of the characters' expressions and appearances.

Folk customs works are mainly based on the production and life of rural farmers in northern Henan, folk customs and folk customs, absorb the nutrition of Han Dynasty clay pottery in the art form, use concise and concise summary of freehand brushwork, grasp the characteristics of the character image, so as to create a group of different identities, different ages, different expressions of naughty children and peasant images, common works are: "Selling Melons", "Haircuts", "Catching the Market", "Child King", "Singer" and so on.

There are two main aesthetic characteristics of Junxian mud goo: one is expressive. Each work of Junxian mud goo shows the characteristics of "taking the spirit from the appearance", whether it is birds, animals, people or folk customs, they all have spirituality. Junxian mud goo in the kneading, coloring are outstanding to show the beauty of expressiveness.

The second is arbitrary. The artists make mud and coo, mostly improvised. Jun County clay sculpture artists are good at understanding the real world with their own life experience. When creating clay sculptures, he can incorporate the external world into the order of his own subjective ideas, and let the objective objects obey his subjective will and reassemble and restructure. In the meantime, you can add and delete at will, and you are never limited to the character of the real thing. In the modeling of Junxian mud toys, the treatment of object archetypes, formal elements, and connotation structures all present the subjectivity and arbitrariness of the artist.

Most of the mud goo in Junxian County is black, and after being molded with yellow clay, it is brushed with black all over the body, and the pattern is depicted with white, red, blue and yellow on the black base. It completely follows the traditional Chinese concept of five colors: black is dark, white is bright, red and blue are bright colors, and yellow is neutral. Black is the bone (main tone), which sets off other colors, bright and eye-catching without losing harmony.

Most of the decorations of Junxian mud goo are made of flowers and grass patterns, and there are many kinds of flower and grass patterns used, and they can also be combined again to form a new beast face. The facial depiction of the clay sculpture figures draws on the expression of traditional woodblock New Year paintings and opera masks, and the ornamentation is colorful and simple.

Judging from the appearance alone, Mud Goo seems to be no different from the "Mud Mud Dog of Huaiyang", both with black background and then painted with colored lines and symbols.

The embryos used in the production are also the cement in the Yellow River, the soil here is more delicate, soft and sticky, strong molding, not easy to crack, is the best material for making clay sculptures, the local people call the yellow clay.

However, there are many differences between mud goo and "mud dog", such as "mud goo" has two small holes in the tail, and the sound of coo can be heard when blown.

The two holes of the "mud dog" are connected head and tail, and the sound of blowing is similar to the sound of a whistle.

The origin of "mud goo" is from the Five Emperors, and the origin of "mud dog" is from Nuwa Fuxi, and there is still a certain difference in the meaning of the essence.

When my master and I went to Huaiyang, we learned that the coloring process of "mud dog" is to use sorghum stalks to continuously dip pigments for coloring.

The traditional Jun County "mud goo" its production tools are very simple, mainly plastic bamboo tubes and bamboo sticks, the maker uses these utensils, through water, hammering and other processes, the local yellow glue clay molded into works, and then dipped in rosin (now changed to ink), foreign color (now changed to gouache pigment), with a homemade hemp pen (now changed to a brush) painted on the plastic blank, mostly with black as the background color, and then with red, yellow, blue, green and other bright colors to draw a variety of patterns, and the black background to form a strong contrast, and then with varnish cover on a layer, It is baked in a small brick clay kiln about 1 meter high and wide.

There are three main production methods of mud goo in Junxian County, namely: traditional hand-kneading, semi-mold making and adding springs to mud toys.

The hand-kneading of Junxian mud goo is mainly divided into nine processes: soil, soil, mud, kneading, jacking, drying, firing, painting and painting.

The biggest difference between semi-mold making and traditional hand-kneading is the use of molds, which first use molds to make various parts of the clay sculptures, and then carry out manual trimming and further kneading respectively, and finally sew them together.

The process of adding springs to clay toys was created in the 50s of the 20th century, and the representative is the "live lion", which is characterized by subjective exaggeration of the head, showing giant eyes, big ears, wide nose and big mouth, "live lion" is different from other production methods: it is the head, body and hydrangea are kneaded separately, and then the head and body are connected with a spring to make it one.

As a category of folk art, Junxian mud goo has become a unique style of cultural cultivation in the agricultural environment in history, providing spiritual support for the people in religious, emotional, aesthetic, entertainment and other aspects. The mud goo has a wide range of themes, a wide variety, rich content, vivid shapes, mysterious colors, strong local flavor and local characteristics, and has high artistic value.

In Jun County, heroes are the traditional themes that local artists are most willing to create, such as: horse riders, heroes of the Three Kingdoms, heroes of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, etc., and a large part of these themes are closely related to the historical events of Jun County, and Jun County mud Gugu has the function of recording the history of the Central Plains.

There are also many images based on myths and legends in the "mud goo" in Jun County, which can be roughly divided into two types: gods and beasts. The image of the gods is mainly based on the eight immortals, and the divine beasts are the zodiac signs and the legendary dragons, unicorns, phoenixes, etc.

For example, the legend of the Eight Immortals has a great influence on the folk, and the Eight Immortals are the stories of Tie Guan Li, Han Zhongli, Zhang Guolao, He Xiangu, Lan Caihe, Lu Dongbin, Han Xiangzi, and Cao Guo's Uncle who became immortals.

Everyone has their own wonderful story, so, each immortal will be loved by people because of its different characteristics, the eight immortals have a lot of stories, and the eight immortals are not as majestic as the Jade Emperor, people feel that the eight immortals are mortals cultivated into immortals, more humane, so people dare to show the image of the eight immortals through the "mud goo".

Because the zodiac is a year-keeping image that has been passed down since ancient times, the zodiac gods are the objects of many folk art expressions, and the same is true of the "mud goo" in Junxian County.

The 12 zodiac signs of "Mud Goo" have a peculiar shape, and the makers have personified them, not simply twelve animal shapes, but they are made into animal heads and human bodies, and they are "dressed" in costumes, which are divided into civilian uniforms and military uniforms, which greatly increases the ornamentality and is also an innovation in art.

In the traditional culture of the Chinese nation, the dragon and the phoenix have always been noble and auspicious beasts, and in the traditional Chinese patterns, the dragon and the phoenix are often matched, symbolizing the auspiciousness of the dragon and the phoenix.

Feudal imperial power in the Chinese nation lasted for thousands of years, in the era of imperial power, the dragon is the symbol of the Son of Heaven, and the phoenix is the symbol of the queen of the world, the Son of Heaven is dressed in a dragon robe, and the queen wears a phoenix crown. Therefore, the dragon and phoenix are also expressed as "mud gooing" as a kind of rui beast, symbolizing beautiful and auspicious things.

In addition, unicorns, unicorns, and polycorns are also the source of the image of "mud goo". The unicorn is similar to the dragon and phoenix, and it is also a kind of Rui beast, while the unicorn and polycorn are created according to the image in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", which is powerful and even a little hideous, but the local people of Jun County believe that this powerful beast can ward off evil spirits and deter evil people, so they also have a soft spot for these divine beasts.

Every year in the first month, Jun County will hold an ancient temple fair, in the temple fair, mud goo is widely used in the folk activities of seeking children, Jun County mud goo is a manifestation of local folk customs.

The wild goose is used as the theme in the "mud goo" in Jun County, which originates from the folk wedding customs of northern China. In ancient times, the six wedding ceremonies used wild geese in many places. Wild goose is a migratory bird that migrates to the warm zone of the south in autumn and winter, and still flies back to the north to breed in spring and summer. Therefore, the ancestors regarded it as a bird adapted to a warm climate. Warmth belongs to yang, and geese migrate with warmth, which is a bird with the sun. According to the ancient concept of yin and yang, men are masculine and women are feminine. And the characteristics of the wild goose with the sun are also used to symbolize marriage.

The ancients wedding was divided into six stages: Nacai, Naji, Naji, Invitation, and Welcome, among them, in the stage of Nacai, Najib, Invitation, and Welcome, the man needed to offer geese to the woman. In addition, the ancients believed that no matter which side of the goose died, the other side would mourn and die, and it was a loyal bird, and it was arranged in an orderly manner when flying, and these characteristics were similar to the ancient ritual system.

Therefore, sending geese at the wedding is a symbolic meaning, that is, I hope that the love will be unswerving, and the husband will sing with the wife. The wild geese in Jun County's "mud goo" imply never abandoning and being loyal. In modern weddings, many relatives and friends will also bring a pair of goose-shaped "mud goo" to the newlyweds as a gift to bring auspicious meaning to the newlyweds and wish them a happy marriage.

The image of the lion in the "mud goo" is largely related to Buddhist culture, and the lion has become a sacred beast that can ward off evil spirits in people's minds.

Tigers are often used as themes in folk crafts, such as cloth tigers, mud tigers, etc. In traditional Chinese culture, the tiger is regarded as a fierce and mighty image, symbolizing good qualities such as health, bravery, and strength. In the folk, adults often dress young children with tiger head hats, tiger head shoes and other clothing, which means that tigers protect children and can make them grow up healthy and strong.

The tiger in the "mud goo" in Jun County has a variety of expressions, but most of them highlight the markings on the tiger's body, and the shape is simple, which is similar to the technique of the folk cloth tiger.

Jun County Nigugu has a long history, has strong cultural characteristics, simple shape, exaggerated and chic, and is well received by the masses and experts and scholars, and is called a living fossil of history by folklore experts.