All the animals featured in Dong Ho pictures are depicted in a lively and animated fashion, which verges on the cartoonish.

The paintings reveal a slice of Vietnamese religious beliefs and cultural patterns as well as reflecting the dreams, wishes and aspirations of the people.

Dong Ho is a typical northern village with red-brown tiled roofs and a confusing network of alleys.

There are only five households in the village that practise the traditional crafts as a lot of families have quit printing to produce votive paper and objects for offerings – an industry that there’s no end to, as you might imagine.

As far back as the 16^th century, Dong Ho village is said to have been famed for its woodblock prints and thereafter enjoyed a healthy prosperity as a result of the prints’ popularity.

In the past, as Tet approached the village would be a thriving business centre with people coming from around the country to barter or buy prints. The market in front of Dong Ho temple would have been as jubilant, colourful and crowded as a local folk festival.

The Dong Ho prints were considered the height of sophistication and lauded for their artistic content.

All woodblocks were chiselled by the craftmen. All the colour-powders were ground from natural substances – black came from the ash of bamboo leaf, green from indigo leaves, blue from copper rust, amber from pine resin, yellow from saphora flowers and gardenia seeds, scarlet from ochre, coral from red wood and white from egg shells.

According to Nguyen Huu Sam, a printmaker in Dong Ho village, the woodblock prints are not only used for decorative purposes, but they reflect the hopes and aspirations for a happy and prosperous life. Some pictures teach us the way to be a good person. Others attack bad behaviour or habits with satirical imagines, he added.

As it’s the Year of the Rat, Sam also introduced a few different prints with the said rodent. One features a rat wedding with a bride on a flowery palanquin and a groom on horseback. Fellow rats in the procession play flutes and other offer fish and a bird to curry favour with a fat cat surveying the scene. In two others a rat performs a dragon dance and a unicorn dance respectively. In another print a successful examination candidate, also a rat, is returning home.

Significantly, the Rat Wedding print is always a popular choice and one of the most famous Dong Ho woodblock prints. Thematically, it reflects a society under the feudal oppression: The cat represents the heartless ruling class while the rats represent the great unwashed.