What traditional cultures have you studied?

1. The history of traditional paper-cut art in China has its own formation and development process. As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, people used hollow carving to make handicrafts on some thin materials, which was popular long before paper appeared. Although it is not made of paper, it is exactly the same, laying the foundation for the emergence of paper-cutting in the true sense. It is said that China's earliest paper-cut works can prove this point.

2. The history of paper-cutting in China's traditional culture, that is, the real art of paper-cutting, should officially begin with the appearance of paper. The main production material of paper-cutting is paper, and the appearance of paper in Han Dynasty promoted the appearance, development and popularization of paper-cutting. At that time, paper was perishable, so people wouldn't keep it. If it broke, they could cut it again.

In the Northern Dynasties, people cut out all kinds of beautiful patterns with paper. It is said that the earliest and well-documented paper-cuts found at present are five paper-cuts of flowers from the Northern Dynasties found near Huoyan Mountain in Turpan, Xinjiang. At that time, the climate in northwest China was dry and rainy, and the paper was not easy to get moldy. Bian Xiao speculated that this may also be an important reason for the discovery of paper-cutting in Xinjiang in the Northern Dynasties.

4. By the Tang Dynasty, paper-cutting had made great progress. At that time, people applied paper-cut patterns to other handicrafts, and it was popular to use paper-cut to evoke souls. Modern archaeology has unearthed a variety of paper-cut handicrafts in the Tang Dynasty, such as the paper-cut in the Tang Dynasty in the British Museum. It can be seen that the manual art level of paper-cutting at that time was quite superb, and the picture composition was complete, expressing an ideal realm between heaven and earth.