The Yellow River winds 628 kilometers through Shandong, where its silt settles into fertile land — and into a unique folk art that uses grain as ink and seeds as brush. Dongming Grain Painting, rooted in the farming civilization of the Yellow River's alluvial plain, has a history of over 1,700 years. In Dongming County, Heze, Han Guorui, a provincial-level representative inheritor of intangible cultural heritage, grew up along the Yellow River. Watching his grandparents make grain paintings from an early age, he was immersed in the craft and came to love this folk art.

　　Grain painting employs twelve techniques, including gluing, pasting, piecing, joining, and carving, which must be applied flexibly according to the needs of each artwork. To enhance the expressive power of his work, Han Guorui often goes to fields, riverbanks, and ditches to collect wild grass seeds. There is an ancient variety of red corn called "lantern red" that his grandparents used to make plum blossoms when he was a child — exceptionally beautiful, but extremely rare. To recreate the corn-made plum blossom pattern, Han Guorui worked with his neighbors to plant the crop repeatedly for three years before accumulating enough seeds for sustainable use. In 2018, while riding a three-wheeled cart to the river embankment to gather seeds, he slipped on the wet road and fell into the river, seriously injuring his right knee — yet this did nothing to diminish his passion for grain painting.