In order to prevent the burning ashes from falling onto the stove, every household in the rural areas, when building a stove, builds a wall from the stove to the roof while making the fume chamber. People call this wall the stove wall. In the old days, a hall was built beside the stove wall, and the statue of “the God of Kitchen” was put in it. Outside of the hall was hung a curtain. To give a better appearance to the stove wall, fume chamber as well as the stove beside the statue of “the God of Kitchen”, mason painters decorate the stove with a variety of patterns. These painted decorations are called the stove flowers, whose themes are highly in accord with the time for the worship of “the God of Kitchen”. For example, stove paintings in earlier times , always simple, with flowers and grass and lines, were mainly themed with “good harvest and annual surplus”. As time went by, paintings with “thriving domestic animals”, “flowers-birds-fish-insects”, “myths and legends” and “natural landscapes” came into being. Later on, colorful stove flowers got to gain currency, whereby the original black lines on the white walls turned into a colorful mixture of red, blue, yellow, green, black and white with varied patterns and textures: elegant and vulgar, thick and thin, refined and simple. The full composition, concise style, bright colors, as well as simple and clear patterns make the stove flowers harmonious, elegant and highly decorative and are of high value for appreciation.

The unique way to draw stove painting is called “the fresco method”. That is, painters draw on the stove before the lime whitewash on the surface gets dry. Later, with the heating and volatilization of the paint, the stove surface gets dry up; and paintings on the stove will not fade throughout decades.