Door gods Yuchi Gong and Qin Qiong with accompanying child

Door gods are one of the most ubiquitous of auspicious themes seen in popular prints created for the redecoration of houses as part of traditional New Year festivities. Prints of door gods come in pairs, to be pasted on the two doors of the main entrance of a traditional Chinese home. Such a public positioning is meant to keep out evil and atrract prosperity. The figures face each other in order to better observe everything that passes through the door.

The two most frequently seen door gods represent the generals Qin Qiong and Yuchi Gong, who are celebrated for having saved a Tang dynasty (618-906) emperor from the threat of demons. Each can be identified by his weapon: Yuchi Gong holds a steel whip and Qin Qiong grasps a sword.

Popular prints became an important part of folk tradition nearly a thousand years ago, and they remain so today. These prints are used for residential decoration and viewing pleasure, and can be purchased throughout the year. Varied in subject, color, and format, the prints are often glued on doors, windows, walls, pillars, furniture, and any place outdoors around the house. Celebratory themes and images pictured on the prints bear wishes for a happy New Year, a long life, health, fortune, continuation of the family line, and protections against evil-many of the prominent themes embedded in symbols on Chinese art.

Popular prints were made either using woodblock printing or using offset lithography, a technique that largely replaced woodblock printing from the early twentieth century onward. Derived from lithography, the offset process involves three cylinders:
1. The artist creates the image on the plate cylinder as he or she would like it to appear in print (that is, a positive image).
2. The image is transferred to the rubber offset cylinder as a negative.
3. Paper is fed between the offset cylinder and the impression cylinder, which presses the image onto the paper and results in a positive print.