Cross-Regional Visual Reconfigurations in Contemporary Chinese Zhong Kui New Year Prints

Zhong Kui, as a deity with strong symbolic significance in traditional Chinese visual culture, continues to be reconstructed within the contemporary folk New Year print system, presenting diverse visual variations across regions. Existing studies have mostly focused on tracing the historical origins of Zhong Kui imagery or describing the styles of individual production areas, while lacking a systematic explanation of the generative logic and cultural connotations of their contemporary cross-regional differences. This study conducts a cross-regional visual comparison of Zhong Kui images from twelve representative New Year print production areas in China, supplemented by in-depth interviews with practitioners and publicly available documents. It analyses the variation and reorganisation of traditional Zhong Kui imagery in contemporary contexts. The findings show that a highly stable core schema, including centralised composition, stylised facial features, and an official attire system, continues to maintain the cultural recognisability of Zhong Kui across regions. At the same time, contemporary works exhibit distinct regional differences in action narratives, combinations of exorcistic symbols, and colour schemes, reflecting the combined influence of local craft traditions, spatial usage habits, and festive aesthetic customs. The study further points out that the cross-regional visual reconstruction of Zhong Kui New Year prints is not a dissolution of tradition, but rather a re-encoding of traditional symbols in modern life contexts and consumer culture. By revealing the visual reconstruction and semantic extension of Zhong Kui imagery in contemporary cross-regional contexts, this study demonstrates the enduring vitality of traditional folk symbols in the modern cultural system and provides an analytical framework and practical reference for understanding their visual transformation and supporting related practices in ICH revitalisation, regional cultural branding, and folk art education.