Symbolic significance of paper-cutting

Paper-cut art is one of the oldest folk arts in China. As a hollow art, it can give people a sense of visual emptiness and artistic enjoyment. Paper-cutting uses scissors to cut paper into various patterns, such as window grilles, doormats, wall hangings, ceilings and snuff.

Every holiday or wedding celebration, people will stick beautiful and bright paper-cuts on windows, walls, doors and lanterns at home, and the festive atmosphere will be more enthusiastic. In rural areas, paper-cutting is usually done by women and girls.

In the past, paper-cutting was a handicraft art that almost every girl had to master, and it was also a standard for people to judge brides. The paper-cutting art in the north and south of China can express all kinds of joys and sorrows in life through a pair of scissors and a piece of paper.

Extended data

The development of history

Tang Xian

Paper was invented in the Western Han Dynasty (6th century BC). Before that, there could be no paper-cutting art. But at that time, people used very thin materials to make handicrafts by hollowing out and carving, but it was popular long before paper appeared, that is, patterns were cut on gold foil, leather, silk and even leaves by carving, carving, picking, carving and cutting.

According to Records of the Historian Jiantong Di Feng, in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the leaves of the pole were cut into "poles" and given to his younger brother, who was named Tang Hou. Leather carving was used during the Warring States Period (one of the cultural relics unearthed from No.1 Chu Tomb in Wangshan, Jiangling, Hubei Province).

Carved silver foil (one of the cultural relics unearthed from the Warring States site in Guwei Village, Huixian County, Henan Province) was removed together with paper-cutting, and their appearance laid a certain foundation for the formation of folk paper-cutting.

In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there was a poem "Painting Yellow on the Mirror" in Mulan Ci. China's earliest paper-cut works are found in five paper-cuts of the Northern Dynasty (AD 386-58 1 year) unearthed near the Flame Mountain in Turpan, Xinjiang. These paper-cuts are folded repeatedly, and the images are not covered with each other.

Baidu encyclopedia-Chinese paper cutting