大理守艺人-甲马及其传承人（英文版）

As a key part in the traditional house-building process, installation of the main beam requires a formal ceremony. In Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province, on this special day, the house owners butcher pigs and sheep for feasts, ask a group of folk musicians to play “peace tune”, and paste and burn charmed papers with figures of the indigenous gods, gods of carpenters and builders, and symbols of cleanness and luck in the house. They pray for the smoothness of house building and the permanent solidity of the house.These charmed papers are also called Jia Ma paper. Jia Ma is a kind of traditional folk woodcut and printmaking art. As a carrier, Jia Ma paper has been widely used in folk praying, disaster relief, sacrifice and other folk activities for thousands of years. According to the “Paper Horse” section in Anthology of Petty Matters in Qing-Objects, Jia Ma was originally called paper horse, which was a handmade colored painting of Taoist deities. Because most of the figures in the paintings were armored on horseback, it was also called Jia Ma (literally means armored horse). In the Song Dynasty, as woodblock printing became popular, Jia Ma developed into a multicolor overprint, which lasted for three dynasties from the Yuan to the Qing Dynasty.