PREDICTING THE WEATHER — FOR PEASANTS
[METEOROLOGY.] ZHAO Jingdong 赵静东, illustrator.
氣象知䛊掛图（供小型展览） [Qixiang zhishi guatu (gong xiaoxing zhanlan); ‘Posters on meteorological knowledge (for use in small-scale exhibitions)’].
Tianjin, Tianjin Municipal Press for the Popularisation of Science via Visual Materials, [1965].
Five posters (each c. 745 x 525 mm) in their original brown manila envelope (282 x 205 mm); each poster with 6–14 colour illustrations reproduced from paintings, text in a mix of simplified and traditional Chinese characters, envelope with title and publisher printed in red; folds to posters and a few other, minor creases, wear to edges of envelope, else in excellent condition.
Added to your basket:
氣象知䛊掛图（供小型展览） [Qixiang zhishi guatu (gong xiaoxing zhanlan); ‘Posters on meteorological knowledge (for use in small-scale exhibitions)’].
An apparently unrecorded set of posters from mid-1960s China instructing peasants in basic meteorology.
Illustrated by the well-known socialist realist artist Zhao Jingdong, the posters explain the basic concepts of the science and how to predict the weather, particularly rain. The five posters cover, in turn: how to forecast the weather by observing clouds; proverbs about the weather and their validity; visible phenomena, in particular the behaviour of animals and how it relates to the weather; how to measure rainfall and soil moisture; and wind direction and the Beaufort scale. The text is in layman’s terms, making extensive use of mnemonics and rhymes, and was evidently written with a rural audience in mind.
Posters such as these were likely produced for travelling officials to put up in village meeting halls, perhaps to accompany a talk. Few have been preserved, particularly in such condition and with the envelope with which they were issued.
The imprint describes the present set as the ‘second impression’ but we have found no other copies, of any impression, elsewhere.
