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Spring has arrived on the 22nd day of the third month of the lunar calendar, but the Changbai Mountains are still silent, deathly still, without a breath of wind. This kind of favorable weather conditions makes the mountain people in the Manjiang area tremble... Manjiang is the hinterland of Changbai Mountain and the headwaters of the Songhua River. It is the confluence of Jinjiang River and Manjiang River. It is also an important river mouth near the southern slope of Laobai Mountain. To be precise, it is an important waterway on the western slope. The volcanic eruption more than a thousand years ago destroyed the virgin forest in this area. Today, people can still see the clear cross-sections of trees that have turned into charcoal layer by layer on the exposed hillside soil. The thickness of the "charcoal rings" of each tree tells today's people everything that passed long ago. However, the forests that have grown back over thousands of years have covered the mountains lushly.

Chinese people used to put up New Year pictures in every house during the New Year. New Year pictures are all printed with woodblocks, so they are also called woodblock New Year pictures. Among the Chinese people, when it comes to the origin of woodblock New Year pictures, everyone can usually count Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Wuqiang in Hebei, Weifang in Shandong, Zhuxian Town in Henan, Fengxiang in Shaanxi, etc. But who would have thought that Jilin in the northeast was once the production center of woodblock New Year paintings. The New Year pictures here are called Chuangguandong New Year pictures... In the late Qing Dynasty, in Licheng County, Jinan Prefecture, Shandong Province, which was also the hometown of the famous thieves Cheng Yaojin, there was an old Li family in Banjiutun. The old man of this family lives with his three sons. The second among them is Li Xiang. He has been fond of thinking about things since he was a child. When his father got old, in order to help the ancestors of the Li family get ahead, he sent Li Xiang to a private school in Jinan Prefecture to read the Four Books and Five Classics when he was young.