Visited Half a Century of Chinese Woodblock Prints at the Tyler Art Institute yesterday. A fascinating exhibition of a form of Chinese art often neglected outside China. Woodblock printing after 1949 was used mostly for Communist propaganda, but this does not detract from the technical brilliance of the works and the adaptations of other forms like Chinese Landscape painting.

Of particular interest are the nianhua -- auspicious prints made to usher in the new year � whose bourgeois motifs of gods and spirits were replaced with PLA soldiers and other icons of the CCP. One particular nianhua has a large PLA soldier looming protectively over playing children, assuming the role of a particular guardian deity, incongruously still with the deity�s flags (used to denote ancient Chinese generals) behind his back.