The history of modern woodblock printmaking during the 1930s in China already appears quite well-known: the writer and iconoclast Lu Xun (魯迅, 1881-1936) guided the young print artists in their efforts, and provided specific artists’ work, for example that of Käthe Kollwitz, for them to emulate, resulting in leftist, socially-engaged imagery. However this article seeks to undermine that codified narrative, demonstrating that much greater complexity can be found in the choices of individual artists like Chen Yanqiao (陳煙橋, 1911-1970). In particular, I argue that Chen drew from nationalistic images of the heroic, nude male body in cartoons, photography, and theorizations on art, published in journals like the politically Right-leaning Vanguard Monthly (Qianfeng Yuekan, 前鋒月刊) or more commercially-oriented Modern Miscellany (Shidai Huabao, 時代畫報). Adapting and redeploying these ideas, Chen created his own image of the idealized worker and further, a metaphorical image of the nation in the resulting woodcuts and cartoons.