What folk skills have been handed down from generation to generation in China?

Paper-cutting is one of the most popular traditional folk decorative arts in China with a long history. Because of its easy materials, low cost, obvious effect, wide adaptability, diverse styles and vivid images, it is widely popular. Because it is most suitable for rural women's leisure production, it can be used as a practical object and beautify their lives. Paper-cutting can be seen all over the country, and even formed different local styles. Paper-cutting not only shows the aesthetic taste of the public, but also contains the deep social psychology of the nation. It is also one of the most distinctive folk arts in China, and its modeling features are particularly worth studying. As the embodiment of China's original philosophy, folk paper-cutting has the characteristics of comprehensiveness, beautification and auspiciousness. At the same time, folk paper-cutting conveys the connotation and essence of traditional culture with its own specific expression language.

On May 20th, 2006, the paper-cut art heritage was approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. On June 5, 2007, Zhou Zhaoming, a disciple of Wang Laoshang in Yuxian County, Hebei Province, was recognized as the representative inheritor of this cultural heritage project by the Ministry of Culture and included in the list of 226 representative inheritors of the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects. On June 8, 2007, Shanghai Li Paper-cut Art Master Studio won the first Cultural Heritage Day Award from the Ministry of Culture.

Paper cutting, also known as paper carving, window cutting or painting cutting. The difference is that when creating, some use scissors and some use carving knives. Although the tools are different, the artistic works created are basically the same, which is collectively called paper-cutting.

Paper-cutting is divided into monochrome paper-cutting and color paper-cutting. A work carved with a color paper-cut is called monochrome paper-cut. Monochrome woodcuts, like prints, are the most commonly used forms, and such works are very simple and generous. Color matching paper-cut is a work carved with different color paper-cuts. This form is not commonly used, but it looks vivid.

New Year pictures are a kind of Chinese paintings. The "Door God Painting", officially called New Year Painting, which began in Guangxu period of the ancient Qing Dynasty, is a unique painting genre in China and an art form loved by rural people in China. Mostly used for posting in the New Year, decorating the environment, with the meaning of wishing the New Year auspicious and festive, hence the name. Traditional folk New Year pictures are mostly made of wood watermarks. The main producing areas are Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Taohuawu in Suzhou and Weifang in Shandong. There are "Moon Brand" New Year pictures in Shanghai, as well as in Sichuan, Fujian, Shanxi, Hebei and even Zhejiang. The old version of New Year pictures has different names because of different frame sizes and processing methods. The whole painting is called "Palace Tip", three pieces of paper are called "Three Talents" and many detailed processes are called "Painting Palace Tip" and "Painting Three Talents". The colors of gold powder coating are called "Golden Palace Tip" and "Golden Tricks". Products before June are called "green edition", and products after July and August are called "autumn edition".

Traditional New Year pictures are mainly woodcut watermarks, which pursue simple style and lively atmosphere, so the lines are simple and the colors are bright. The content includes flowers and birds, fat children, golden roosters, spring cattle, myths and legends, historical stories and so on. It expresses people's longing for a bumper harvest and a happy life, and has strong national characteristics and local flavor.

The four famous "Hometowns of New Year Pictures" in China are Mianzhu New Year Pictures, Suzhou Taohuawu, Tianjin Yangliuqing and Shandong Weifang. New Year pictures made in these places are deeply loved by urban and rural people.

The appellations of New Year pictures vary greatly from place to place, such as "Draw a picture" and "Protect a picture" in Beijing, "Draw a picture" in Suzhou, "Flower Paper" in Zhejiang, "Divine Symbol" in Fujian and "Doufang" in Sichuan. Today, New Year pictures are gradually called "New Year pictures".

New Year pictures are a folk craft for Chinese people to pray for good luck and welcome the New Year, and it is also a folk art expression that carries people's yearning for a better future. Historically, people called New Year pictures "paper paintings", called "painting stickers" in the Song Dynasty and "painting" in the Qing Dynasty. Until the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, scholar Li Guangting wrote in his article: "It is a child's ear to paste New Year pictures after sweeping the house." New Year pictures got their name from this.

New Year pictures are simple in lines, bright in colors and warm and pleasant in atmosphere, such as pictures of spring cows, New Year's Eve, Jia Sui, playing with babies, family happiness, watching lanterns and fat dolls. Some take immortals, historical stories and dramatic figures as themes. Many of them are used to put up door paintings, which are mixed with the concepts of "God protects the courtyard", such as "Tiancha", "Tianguan" and "Qin Qiong respects virtue", etc. The genre (or form) includes door paintings (single picture, folio) and horizontal and vertical single picture and four screens. There have been records about New Year pictures in the Song Dynasty, and the earliest woodcut New Year pictures seen at present are the graceful appearance of the Southern Song Dynasty and the Sui Dynasty. In the middle of Qing dynasty, it was especially popular. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), New Year pictures became more popular and brought forth new ideas.

The art of New Year pictures was initiated by China, and it also reflected the history, life, beliefs and customs of China society. Every Lunar New Year, I buy two New Year pictures and stick them on the door, which is the case in almost every family. From the gate to the hall, there are all kinds of colorful New Year pictures symbolizing good fortune. The reason why the Spring Festival is full of joy and excitement is that New Year pictures have played a certain role in it. Generally speaking, rich people always like to hang birthday stars, purple stars, blessings, blessings and longevity characters in the hall. Flowers and birds, such as Zhi, Mei Lan and Zhu Ju, are naturally popular.

For thousands of years, New Year pictures are not only colorful decorations for New Year's festivals, but also carriers and tools for cultural circulation, moral education, aesthetic exchange and belief inheritance. It is also a popular reading material that can read pictures; For the New Year pictures with the color of current politics, it is still a kind of media that is deeply loved by all kinds of people. This kind of content can be regarded as an encyclopedic folk art, which contains the complete folk spirit of China.

New Year pictures are also a dictionary of regional culture, from which we can find the distinctive cultural personality of each region. These personality factors can be recognized at a glance not only in the subject matter, but also in the genre, color, lines and different flavors of the origin of each New Year picture. You can know all the people in China from the New Year pictures.

Color embroidery

Generally refers to the embroidery process of controlling patterns with various colored embroidery threads, which has the characteristics of smooth embroidery surface, rich stitches, fine stitches and bright colors, and is widely used in clothing accessories.

The color changes of color embroidery are also very rich. It uses thread instead of pen, and produces gaudy color effect by overlapping, juxtaposing and interlacing embroidery threads of various colors. In particular, it is the most distinctive way to express the subtle changes of pattern color by setting needles, which has the effect of rendering Chinese painting.

shadow play

Shadow play is a kind of folk drama, which uses lights to illuminate the silhouette of people made of animal skins or cardboard to perform stories. In the performance, the artists manipulated the opera characters behind the white curtain, sang stories with local popular tunes, and matched them with percussion instruments and strings, which had a strong local flavor. In rural Henan, this simple folk art form is very popular with people.

Shadow play has a long history in China. By the Yuan Dynasty, shadow play had spread to Persia, Arabia and Turkey. Later it spread to Southeast Asia. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, shadow play was introduced to Paris, Marseille and London, England. This art form, which originated in China, has attracted many foreign fans and is affectionately called "China Shadow Play Lamp".

The raw materials of shadow play are mostly cattle and sheep skins. Cowhide is the first choice in southern Henan, and donkey skin is commonly used in western Henan. The production and performance process of shadow play is as follows: first, the skin is soaked, scraped and smoothed, and then the artist draws maps of various characters on the skin, and then draws them with various types of knives such as oblique knives, round knives, flat knives and triangular knives. When carving, we usually use male carvings, and some also use female carvings. The carving is meticulous and the knife method is changeable. Painting and dyeing are also very particular. Women's hair accessories and costumes are mostly patterned with flowers, clouds and phoenix, while men are mostly patterned with dragons, tigers, water and clouds. Generally, loyal and kind people are divided into five parts, and villains are divided into seven parts. Character modeling, like drama characters, has complete roles such as life, Dan, purity, ugliness and so on. The height of shadow play is 55 cm, and the height of shadow play is only about 10 cm. The limbs and head of the shadow play are carved separately. It is composed of lines, so it can move freely when expressing. A shadow play must be manipulated with five bamboo sticks. The artist's fingers are flexible and often dazzle the audience. You should not only have excellent skills in your hands, but also speak, read, play and sing in your mouth, and brake gongs and drums at your feet. The screen of shadow play is a piece of white gauze with the size of 1 meter. The white yarn becomes crisp and bright after being polished by fish oil. During the performance, the shadow play moves close to the screen, and the hollow figures and colorful colors are really touching. The vocals used by artists in performing shadow play not only absorb the traditional vocals in this region, but also have their own originality. Although the shadow play seems simple, it is ingenious and contains the rich imagination and ingenious artistic creativity of the working people. Its props are small, the performance is convenient, and it is not limited by the venue, and the actors do not need formal training, so it is deeply loved by the people in the mountainous areas of southern and western Henan. In the areas where shadow play is popular, whenever this light art form is mentioned, people will affectionately call it "one burden" art, or light cavalry in cultural life.

Shadow play was first born in the Western Han Dynasty two thousand years ago, also known as sheepskin play, commonly known as head play and shadow play. It originated in Shaanxi, China, matured in the Tang and Song Dynasties and flourished in Hebei in the Qing Dynasty. As the name implies, shadow play is made of leather. Cowhide and donkey skin are better for firmness and transparency. When coloring, five kinds of fixed transparent pigments such as red, yellow, cyan, green and black are mainly used. It is precisely because of these special materials that the shadows of figures and props in shadow play projected on the screen under the backlight are magnificent and crystal clear, with unique aesthetic feeling. According to the custom of China traditional opera, the characters in shadow play can be divided into five categories: raw, Dan, clean, ugly and ugly. More specifically, each character consists of eleven parts: head, upper body, lower body, two legs, two upper arms, two lower arms and two hands. Performers make characters do various actions by controlling a main lever in front of the collar and two joysticks at the ends of both hands. In China, many local operas are derived from shadow play, and the performance principles and artistic means adopted by shadow play have also played an important leading role in the invention of modern films and the development of modern film art films. Nowadays, China's shadow play is being collected by museums all over the world, and it is also a good gift from the China government and other national leaders. It can be seen that the art of shadow play has high artistic value in China and even in the world.