Grandma Baoxiang is 83 years old this year, and in her past life, she has successfully played two roles, one is her mother and the other is herself.
As a mother for the first half of her life, she sent her five children out of the farm and into college as a rural housewife. As for the shaping of herself, from the age of 71, she really started a new life with a pair of scissors, from picking up scissors to winning the trophy of two consecutive paper-cutting competitions, it took only one year.
Baoxiang's grandmother's original name is Chen Baoxiang, a native of Wannan Village, Sanjia Town, Gaoping City, Shanxi Province.
At 71 years old, she is really
Start your own life
When she was in her 60s, Baoxiang's grandmother was deaf, and her sometimes manic tinnitus made her lie dormant in bed all day, and every time her children came home, they inadvertently touched her, which would make her excited to get up from the bed quickly, and her godless pupils would infinitely dilate the dementia, and the premature old age made her look miserable.
Until the winter of the age of 70, Baoxiang's grandmother and her wife accidentally poisoned by gas, inhaled two courses of oxygen chamber, coupled with the careful care of the eldest daughter, the tinnitus that had tormented her for a long time was miraculously weakened.
Her daughter said that her mother's sudden interest and belief came from the support of a distant uncle who was engaged in collecting and sorting out folk culture after retirement, and brought her mother books on paper-cutting when she returned to her hometown. My mother was so fond of these books that she put herself on colorful paper and scissors like a demon.
Grandma Baoxiang first took materials from her children and grandchildren, and a few scissors went down, Xiao Er, Feifei, Tian Tian, and Tongtong played on the seesaw.
She also cut a large family, her son is an old cow, her daughter-in-law is a dragon, her granddaughter is a rabbit, and her grandson is a naughty monkey...... The children in the family were all cut into small animals by her according to the zodiac, and when she cut too much, she pasted them on the wall and glued them to the cardboard.
Baoxiang's grandmother cut the family photo "Grown Up", each child also cut the zodiac below, and the next row of small zodiac signs represents the grandchildren.
Knowing that her mother likes it, every time her son and second daughter come home, she will bring a variety of colors of paper, and Grandma Baoxiang is like a child, each color has to be cut and then glued to the large and small pieces of paper, and her creations are everywhere on the wall. Her cutouts are whimsical.
As soon as the children got home, she took out all the works for the children to enjoy, saying that "well cut" can make her very happy, and if the children take pictures with their mobile phones, Grandma Baoxiang's satisfaction and achievements can not be hidden.
The wife will mumble next to her: "Your mother is already obsessed, and she can't even take care of cooking."
Grandma Baoxiang's paper-cut work "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"
Baoxiang Grandma's paper-cut work "Bald Girl Playing with Chicken"
Baoxiang Grandma's paper-cut work "Visionary Vision"
Grandma Baoxiang has lived in her husband's constant mood all her life, her husband is a good person, and she has been a great grandmother all her life, and she has never blushed. He worked as an accountant all his life, and when he was young, the two of them worked in the same yard and fell in love freely, which was also very rare at the time.
The children also learned about this past later, and before, they always thought that their mother was not good, so they followed their honest father. After that gas poisoning, the grandmother's son found that his mother had written these words in his notebook: "The two have never seen a play together, they haven't had a meeting together, but they both live in the hospital when they are old."
A misery in life turned into an unusual romance that she cherished in her heart.
Baoxiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Husband and wife visit the temple fair"
Follow my mother to cut flowers for a few days
It is the best food of the year
Grandma Baoxiang's earliest paper-cutting enlightenment teacher was her mother, and in the village where she lived, when she encountered marriage, repairing houses, beams, and children's full moons, there were special paper-cutting businesses. For example, marriage, cutting flowers, steaming buns is a must, to steam a big bun, there are two arms to ring over so big, the bun should be covered with a red paper cut called "Luo" paper-cut, this paper-cut as a whole is like countless happy words composition, between the horizontal stripes is a hollow lattice, after cutting, it is a circular three-dimensional form scattered.
On the day of the wedding, this big bun was brought to the woman's house by the matchmaker, in addition to the paper-cut on the bun, the wall, the door, and the window should be pasted with happy flowers, the dragon and phoenix are auspicious, and the magpie Dengmei's big happy flower is pasted up, and the festive atmosphere is there. When the child makes the full moon, the flower bun "lamb" must also be covered with red paper-cuts.
These are the simplest paper-cutting activities that run through local daily life.
Bao Xiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Rabbit and Kitten Help Mice Greet Kiss"
Baoxiang Grandma's paper-cut work "Sending Joy"
Grandma Baoxiang said that when she was a child, she often followed her mother to the rich family to cut flowers, in addition to weddings and funerals, there were also many flower cutting jobs during the New Year. "The days when I followed my mother to cut flowers were the best food of the year. When her mother cuts, she will also sit next to her with a small pair of scissors, and she will learn to cut the shredded paper that her mother cuts.
When asked if she had ever looked for a teacher when she picked up scissors again to cut paper, Grandma Baoxiang said seriously: "I can't count on the teacher to do it, I still have to rely on my own heart."
Baoxiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Cut-out Man"
Next time I work a little harder, it's a gold award
In her later years, she picked up scissors and began to pick up scissors, and Grandma Baoxiang's small emotions that had entangled her life in the past seemed to have departed from the consistent track.
Whether it is historical stories, hometown legends, or even some pictures in the depths of her memory, she can also search for them.
Baoxiang Grandma's paper-cut work "Rolling Hydrangea"
Bao Xiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Two-headed Tiger and Hunter"
It didn't take long for Grandma Baoxiang to no longer be satisfied with just admiring her family's paper-cutting, and with the encouragement of that distant relative, she decided to participate in the local "Jiaochangping Energy Cup" paper-cutting competition.
She was inspired by a book about the monuments of Gaoping, which included a pagoda on Sheep's Head Mountain, which she cut out in her mind.
After sending out the entries, her daughter described her mother as "the first time in her life that she began to look forward to honors": "My mother waited without a trace of inferiority or suspicion, and she was always firm that her unique style, which was very different from the usual paper-cutting, would definitely stand out." ”
This was soon confirmed, and the news of the bronze award for "The Pagoda" came back. What made her even more excited was that the following year, she received an invitation from Youyu for the Opera Character Competition.
Baoxiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Guilty of Petitioning"
Baoxiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Journey to the West"
Baoxiang Grandma's paper-cut work "Horses on the Battlefield of the Battle of Changping"
Grandma Baoxiang quickly cut out "Characters of the Three Kingdoms" and "Characters of the Dream of Red Mansions" according to the requirements of the competition, and she also cut "Mulan", and later, she saw a "Overlord Whip" in an unknown magazine, which brought her a lot of inspiration. In the end, she won the silver medal of the competition with her self-created "Overlord Whip".
After receiving the medal, Grandma Baoxiang joked with her family: "I won the silver medal without using enough three minutes, and next time I use a little effort, it will be the gold award!"
Baoxiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Overlord Whip"
At the beginning, Grandma Baoxiang couldn't decide which work to submit, so she took all the opera characters and stories she cut to the distant relative who encouraged her to participate in the competition, and helped her get an idea, and picked and choose, and finally the remaining three works were really unable to be selected, so two of them were signed with the names of her wife and daughter and sent to the competition.
The award-winning "Overlord Whip" was signed with her daughter's name, and the medal sent back was naturally engraved with her daughter's name. Grandma Baoxiang took the medal and took the bus to find the person in charge, wanting to change the name, some people think that they are still worried about this kind of thing at such an age, but the daughter understands the grievances in her mother's heart, "Fate has never let her on the stage of her dreams, finally, she found the paper-cut, and rediscovered herself in the conception and pondering of a piece of paper." However, this last little full stop failed to draw on me, and I think anyone would be unwilling. ”
Grandma Baoxiang was born in Huannan Village, married at the age of 20, and married in Nannan Village, she has never left her hometown in her life. At the age of 7, she started school. When he was 10 years old, his father, who was a teacher, was imprisoned for his composition. After graduating from high school, she was never able to go to school because of her father's problems.
From the age of 20 to 50, she only did one thing, which was to send all five children to the examination room, so that they could each be admitted to an ideal school and have a stable job. Such an achievement was a very amazing thing for the countryside at that time.
Recalling her mother's education, her daughter said: "I remember when I was young, as soon as my brother and sister heard the sound of our mother opening the door, we immediately went to find what we had to do, even if it was pretending, in short, to cover up our previous laziness. ”
What's the point of being the same as everyone else
She likes to read very much, and when her husband was the brigade accountant, the family ordered some newspapers and magazines, and she would read every issue carefully. When she got older, as long as there were words, she would put on her glasses and look at them carefully, and most of the time, she would hum and repeat them.
She is interested in books on folk history, hometown customs, legends, and the like. She likes to find inspiration for paper-cutting from books, such as the works of these two competitions, she is based on the subject matter requirements of the competition, she has read a lot of books to do research to get inspiration, "Pagoda" comes from a book that introduces the local monuments of Gaoping, "Overlord Whip" is a stamp called "Overlord Whip" that I saw from an old magazine.
Perhaps it is precisely because of her extensive knowledge that her paper-cutting also has all kinds of themes, cutting myths and legends, fairy tales, children in front of her, and gossip heard in the village.
She is a little uninhibited in the matter of paper-cutting, she doesn't like to draw a draft on the back of the paper like others, and then engrave it according to the line, she enjoys the heartiness brought by the scissors as she likes, every time she is asked how it is different from other people's paper-cutting, she will say: "What is the meaning of being the same as others." In addition, each work has a lot of fragments and different colors, which is completely different from the traditional paper-cutting, making her paper-cutting style "rock and roll".
Baoxiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Wu Song Fights the Tiger"
Baoxiang Grandma's paper-cut work "Weightlifting"
Baoxiang grandma's paper-cut work "Husband and Wife Overlord Whip"
From the age of 71 to pick up scissors and start paper-cutting, to now 83 years old, in the world of paper-cutting, she is a 12-year-old girl, she said that her life in the past 20 years is the happiest, sending children out of the house, she really began to live herself.
Baoxiang's grandmother's paper-cut work "Dragon and Tiger Leap to Celebrate the Festival"
Dictation/Picture: Guo Weiling/Chen Baoxiang/Liu Yida (sitting on the ground)
Interview/Editor: Tang Di Executive Producer: Algae