Good Chinese craftsmanship: paper-cutting cuts out a new life

Narrator: Fu Zhao'e, representative inheritor of Ningxia's national intangible cultural heritage

Every New Year's Festival, marriage and birthday, it is indispensable to cut the window flowers and ask for color.

A pair of scissors, a piece of paper, this craft looks simple, in fact, there is a lot of learning, pay attention to the unity of heart and hand, eye to hand, ten thousand cuts continuously. Take this "Harmonious Family", for example, in the 20-meter long scroll, there are Yellow River waterwheels, desert smoke, loess caves, western cinemas, Liupan mountain... These Ningxia element symbols, I don't have to depict, a pair of scissors in one go.

Hard kung fu is not practiced in a day. 20 years ago, I was fascinated by cutting portraits, and in order to think through the character images of the four famous works, I read the original book dozens of times. I sorted out 112 prominent characters in "Journey to the West" according to the classification of gods, mortals, and monsters, as well as one hundred and eight generals in "Water Margin". Over the decades, there have been no less than 100,000 portraits of people.

One story at a time. Paper-cutting is passed down from generation to generation, what remains unchanged is the material and technique, and what changes is the content. In the hands of the older generation, there are some flowers, birds, fish and insects, Fulu Shouxi, "peacocks playing with peonies, wives love old men." To me, the paper-cutting has a new expression in keeping up with the changes of the times, which is the meaning.

If you look at this painting "The Spirit of the Red Boat Guides the Voyage", every element has a good meaning. It is said that the Communist Party is the "cow" of our people, and the main body of the work is this cow standing on the wheel. The big "Fu" character on the bull's head, the "fish" on the cow every year, the Clean "Lotus" on the top of the head, and the red boat on the stomach together tell the story of the Chinese Communist Party leading the people to seek happiness.

After my daughter graduated from college, she and I inherited the paper-cutting business. She combined paper-cutting with two-dimensional animation to make a paper-cut cartoon "Chinese Year", which was translated into many languages and spread around the world.

(Interview and collation by Zhang Wenpan, reporter of this newspaper)

Source: Guangming Daily (February 13, 2022, 01 edition)

Editor-in-charge: Zhang Yongqun

Edit: Wang Yuanfang