Cover Art since 2010
2023 Year of the RabbitThe traditional Chinese almanac (known in Cantonese as Tong Sing and Mandarin as Huang Li) is a centuries-old repository of cultural information, from household tips to medical remedies. But what has made it a mainstay in Chinese homes is its annual prediction of auspicious or ominous days for a wide range of activities. Authors Joanna C. Lee and Ken Smith translate and decode the almanac's predictions with daily listings for 2023, the Year of the Rabbit.
2022 Year of the TigerWith this edition, marking the beginning of our second lunar cycle, the Pocket Chinese Almanac features cover art from the Asian American community. In addition to his award-winning illustrated books and solo and group exhibitions, the Hong Kong-born, Brooklyn-based artist Kam Mak is arguably most famous for a popular series of vibrant postage stamps commissioned by the U.S. Postal Service to commemorate Lunar New Year. Images of chubby babies are a Lunar New Year staple, but Mak’s “Chubby Baby” offers a veritable cornucopia of auspicious Chinese symbols, from various flowers and fruits to gold ingots and a ceremonial jade scepter, along with koi fish and a couple of orbiting bats.
For more information about our cover artist Kam Mak
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2013 Year of the SnakeMuch in the spirit of our verbal content, which presents Chinese tradition with the modern reader in mind, our cover art "Shikumen Firecracker" portrays a Chinese New Year celebration in a traditional Shanghai neighborhood. Shikumen ("stone warehouse gate”), a late 19th-century architectural style, once represented more than half of Shanghai's landscape but is now a rare (and protected) historic treasure. The artwork comes from Pureland Décor and Art, a Shanghai-based company whose ethos is folk art for the commercial marketplace, with hand-made decorative tiles and home furnishings adapting Chinese traditional elements for modern use. http://www.pureland.cn/
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2012 Year of the DragonCelebrating this most auspicious of Chinese years, we offer a multi-colored paper cut from the Gansu Province Arts and Craft Factory made in 1978, shortly after the Cultural Revolution. During this period, individual artists and craftsmen were still anonymous in China’s early state-owned enterprises, making this a fitting tribute for an entire people known collectively as “descendants of the dragon.” (Courtesy of the Western China Cultural Ecology Research Workshop)
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2011 Year of the RabbitThis edition looks visually to the nianhua (literally, “New Year’s pictures”) of China’s northwest. This image of Cai Shen, the God of Prosperity, by artist Tai Liping (b. 1952) and his father was created immediately in the late 1970s. Tai, a 20th-generation folk craftsman of the Shixing Art Workshop in Fengxiang, Shaanxi Province, began studying with his grandfather at age 6. With his father Tai Yi, he reconstructed the family’s 500-year tradition, which had been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, creating some 20 woodblocks and reconstructing more than 300 others from surviving prints. Tai Liping has been featured in cultural exhibitions in Melbourne, Paris and Hong Kong, and was recognized in 1996 by UNESCO for his outstanding achievements in preservation, creation and promotion of China’s intangible cultural heritage.
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2010 Year of the TigerOur inaugural Pocket Chinese Almanac, licensed and translated directly from the Kong King Tong edition published by Hong Ming Brothers Printing Press, Ltd., also contained original artwork from the Kong King Tong folk art archive. The cover, a popular image from the regular Chinese-language edition, features Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy and a beloved mother figure in Chinese folklore--an image embodying a palpable connection to portrayals of the Madonna and Child in Western religious art.
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