Ring in the Chinese New Year with festive paper cuttings

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Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, is without a doubt the most important holiday for Chinese people around the world. As preparation for the holiday season, most people will clean their homes and spruce them up with festive decorations. One of the most traditional and best-loved kinds is the ‘paper cutting'.

A long legacy

Put simply, a paper cutting is a pattern cut out of paper. However, for the Chinese it's more than just simple arts and crafts. In China, the tradition goes back at least 1500 years and the designs are full of meanings. Most commonly used as decorations for major events like Spring Festival, weddings and births in the family, paper cuttings are symbols of happiness and good fortune.

They're plastered on doors and windows, and often depict the Chinese character for ‘fortune' surrounded by fish, a symbol of plenty. Those made to be displayed over Spring Festival will definitely feature the upcoming zodiac animal, so be prepared to see paper cuttings of pigs everywhere in 2019.

Despite looking like a painting, this piece of art was cut from paper. /CGTN Photo

A cut above the rest

Around 4 hours' drive from Beijing is Yuxian County. It's the only place in the country where knives, instead of scissors, are used to make paper cuttings. Shaped like scalpels, they give the artist significantly more control and freedom, allowing them to create astonishingly intricate designs.

While scissors only allow you to cut a few sheets of paper at a time, a knife in the hands of a Yuxian paper-cutter can pierce up to 100 sheets in one go. Unlike other traditional crafts that are struggling, this allows the artist to mass produce their designs and actually make a decent living.

Yuxian paper cutting is a national intangible cultural heritage. /CGTN Photo‍

Perhaps that's why in Yuxian County alone there are some 30,000 paper cutting artists. In addition, while traditional paper cuttings are typically red – the color of good luck, the vibrancy and depth of the colors used by Yuxian artists show just how seriously they treat this craft. To them, paper cutting is more than just a tradition, it's art.