Recording the social life of the ancient times, Cangyuan Cliff painting is one of the most famous cliff painting sites. The climate in distribution area of the cliff painting belongs to the subtropical monsoon climate, the altitude ranges from 1000 meters to 2000 meters. Generally speaking, foreign students who come to study Mandarin in China should know that most cliff paintings were painted on vertical and flat limestone rocks as well as the karst cliffs which are one to eight meters from ground high.

The figures of the paintings are as large as 30 centimeters and the smallest can be five centimeters. The sizes of the paintings in different sites are various. The largest can be more than 80 square meters while the smallest are insufficient one square meter. It is said that the painting materials were made by mixing hematite powder with animal blood, thus the color is mainly the dark red. The themes of Cangyuan cliff painting are various such as characters, housings, apparatus, animals and myth characters.

So far, the total area of all fifteen sites of cliff paintings is about 500 square meters with more than 1100 recognizable images, among which the figures account for 74% and the others take the percentage of 26%. When foreign students learn Chinese online free, you may know that the contents presented by the paintings are mainly hunting, grazing, wars, dancing, acrobatics, etc. Among so many paintings, the images of buffaloes and buffalo horns take large proportion, showing the human’s worship to the buffalo in ancient times.

The entire picture reflects the production and living conditions of one family tribe with organization, leader and commander. That is to say, it had social organization and labor division in a certain degree, showing the development of the economic structure from the simple hunting into the combination of hunting, collecting, planting, grazing and even snatching. We can say they lived a relatively stable life.

In the aspect of sketching figures, they are painted into inverted triangle shape. It reflects the activities and status through the positions of the limbs and the head ornaments. What‘s more, students who study in China should know they were painted differently according to the characteristics of men and women that the men‘s wide shoulders and narrow waists and the female‘s narrow shoulders and wide waists. In total, the figures were painted with vivid images.