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Household door-god and protective New Year prints

About the work

Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 119). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.

  • Workbook assessment: Best supported

  • Date or witness: Early 12th-century marketplace use recalled in a text prefaced 1147; further Song witnesses in the 13th century

  • Region: China

  • Workbook date-sort bounds: 1102 CE to 1279 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.

Description

Households repeatedly buy and paste affordable protective images at their doors; private printers supply locally varied designs for the same recognizable purpose.

Evidence of adoption or transmission

Meng Yuanlao records New Year sales of printed door gods and Zhong Kui. Later Song accounts and domestic-display imagery support a recurring household practice.

What remains uncertain

A distributed folk-image practice, not a measured short-lived craze. Medieval evidence should not be used to date every later guardian identity or print design.

Candidate-index family 2: Household door-god and protective New Year prints

The workbook groups records 119 here and rates the family Best supported. This is a research shortlist, not proof of an independently established meme family.

  • Dated evidence: Early 12th-century marketplace use recalled in a text prefaced 1147; further Song witnesses in the 13th century

  • Region: China

  • Shortlist uncertainty: A distributed folk-image practice, not a measured short-lived craze. Medieval evidence should not be used to date every later guardian identity or print design.

Workbook revision note: Added after correcting the humour-based selection

Sources

Bibliography note

Reference: Michael Anthony Kardos, God of the Gate, Protector of the Door: Door Gods (Menshen) in Chinese Popular Religion (MA thesis, University of British Columbia,1998), chapterIV; includes Meng Yuanlao's Dongjing meng hua lu, juan10 ('Twelfth month'), preface1147.