Yang Jinhui, 81, living in Jinhai town, Qidong – a county-level city administered by Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province – is a representative inheritor of Shadi mud-made stove painting, which is a Nantong intangible cultural heritage item.

Mud-made stove painting is a national intangible cultural heritage item. As the name implies, it is done on a mud-made stove. People use various pigments to paint patterns – depicting expectations of a happy life – which are then transferred onto the stove wall.

Yang started to learn the craft when he was only six years old. Practice makes perfect and after years of effort, combined with his rich imagination, Yang possessed first-class mud-made stove painting techniques.

Some manuscripts for mud-made stove paintings. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

In the old days, people in rural areas were used to cooking with mud-made stoves and Yang had a booming business.

But with the improvement of living conditions, mud-made stoves gradually disappeared from people's lives and there are fewer mud-made stove painters like Yang.

Yang hopes the younger generation will choose to inherit and promote the traditional art, to enable people to learn more about life in the past.

Yang repigments paintings on a stove wall at his home. [Photo/Nantong Daily]