This series of tiehua depict the white snake story, a popular Chinese folktale. They were commissioned amid the backdrop of a “New China” in which the Chinese Communist Party wanted to modernize the nation under a socialist system. This modernization can be seen in the very different techniques utilized in this work, which allowed for a much greater efficiency in shaping the metal, as seen in the fine detail. This coincides with pressure from the CCP to modernize the handicraft industry,  which was considered to be associated with old China. Artisans’ social class was a bit tricky, but they were nonetheless pressured to distance themselves from old workshops to more advanced, yet still collective forms of production.