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nded to the mass, feeding them hatred to the west, rather than appealing to their situation and suffering because of the enemies like Hu did and provoke their power to fight back from that. Besides the great difference in style, content and the way to arouse public consciousness that are evident, the most striking difference between “To the Front!” and “Anti-Christian Print” signifies the groundbreaking element in the New Chinese Woodcut Movement, revolutionizing art as a voice of the people.

Traditionally, woodcut prints had not only been used for propaganda but also a tool for enlightenment and raising awareness. However, the traditional ways were using idealized examples to praise Confucius, governement approved virtues and feeding ideas of rigidity of social order in the form of illusionistic peace and happiness. For example, “Five Sons Successful in Examinations”(Figure 9) is propaganda for the old-fashioned and stubborn Chinese examinations. The artist twisted the idea and chose to focus on the glory of having five sons being successful in examinations. This way, people would tend to forget the rigidity of the examinations. The depiction of the characters in this image is highly unrealistic and the decorative, colourful imagery is in great contrast to Hu’s woodcuts. These people were very happy and like in tradition of Chinese nianhuas and no hardships or sufferings can be seen on their faces. The rigidity, the great time required to learn for the exam and the corruptness were never mentioned. The reason why Lu Xun and the artists of the New Chinese Woodblock Movement were called revolutionary was that they depicted social sufferings as it was and added an addition of critical consciousness to these “educational art”.

As mentioned above, there seemed to be much irony as these young artists should lean from the west which were less experienced in woodcuts and were their enemies. However, it was precisely because they had been bullying and easily defeated them for so many times since the 1840s that open-minded Chinese intellectuals such as Lu Xun realized that in order to revive their dying country, the only way was to learn from the enemy and modernize. One way to do it was the redevelopment of woodprints and it proved to be successful. Though the masses might held hesitation in fully accepting these very foreign style of woodcuts [9] , the messages that these prints sent were bright and clear. These woodprint artists were the first ones to represent the “real” people in these mass production prints. Across the country, a large number of woodcut societies united individual artists and formed important organizations that supported the production of exhibitions, publication and manifestos. They found their voice and the emotions aroused from being bullied by warlords and foreigners that they learnt to express through art signified dignity among the Chinese people and ignited the fire in the heart of Chinese people to fight against evil powers together as a nation.