From ancient times to the present, every household has to stick paper cuttings on New Year's Day, when did this start?

The art of paper-cutting can be traced back to before the sixth century A.D. At that time, paper had not yet appeared, people in order to keep track of the convenience of these carriers in bronze, bamboo slips, animal skins and so on, to draw some pictures, to present the content of the record, which is the predecessor of the art of paper-cutting. After the appearance of paper, these creative patterns began to transfer to paper, so the origin of paper-cutting is from the way of pattern recording of the ancestors. The true meaning of the art of paper-cutting should be from the emergence of paper before the official start, the emergence of paper during the Han Dynasty, promoting the emergence, development and popularization of paper-cutting. In the Song Dynasty, the paper industry matured, making the art of paper-cutting more and more popular, the Song Dynasty paper-cutting used in a variety of fields, the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the folk art of paper-cutting is more and more mature, and the types of paper-cutting are also becoming more and more varied.

Folk paper-cutting is extremely rich in variety, a wide range of uses, for people's lives add endless interest, reflecting their beautiful ideals and aspirations. Every New Year's households to stick on the window to highlight the festive window, for the decoration of indoor walls and wall flowers on the wall, the Spring Festival hanging on the lintel of the door and so on are decorative paper cuts, most of which contain auspicious meaning.

Folk wedding festivities used to decorate a variety of artifacts, to celebrate the birth of a new family, send good wishes of the happy flowers, to the life of the cut life flowers, in the rituals or festivals to decorate the offerings or offerings, etc., these belong to the ceremonial class of the paper cuts, most of which contain the meaning of joy, blessings and prayers.

China's traditional working women in their five or six years of age, they began early "women's red" training, they have to learn weaving, stitching, cooking, cleaning, etc., and paper cutting and embroidery that is, they must master the skills, they embroidery before the emergence of a paper-cutting category ----- embroidery patterns. Embroidery patterns are cut from white paper, mostly with very thin white powder even paper, embroidery patterns paper-cutting subject matter is very broad, where the figures, landscapes, birds and flowers, beasts and so on have performance.

Folk paper-cutting in the long process of circulation and development, through successive generations of folk artists continue to innovate and material changes, and gradually formed a variety of forms of expression, and the most common is still monochrome paper-cutting, point color paper-cutting, color cutting and folding paper-cutting.

Dot-color paper-cutting uses white rice paper because it is easy to render color. When the work is finished cutting and carving and then spot-dyeing the color, the color used is added with white wine and medicinal materials, so that as long as the dyeing of the first sheet, the color will automatically penetrate into, and will not be blotted outwards. Dot-dyeing paper-cutting is rich in color, with endless changes, and because the colors used are all magenta, the colors are pure, bright and loud, with a rich local flavor.

The art of paper-cutting has a history of 1,500 years, although the production of simple, simple shape, but it embraces a wealth of folklore and the connotation of life, it is the concentration of many kinds of folk art forms of expression and exaggeration, and therefore a more concentrated embodiment of the folklore and folklore and the people's interest in life, with a fairly high cultural value, is China's precious intangible cultural heritage.