Chinese Literature

lanterns and other things, and are reckoned as symbols of happiness that -brighten the home, They can also be used as patterns for embroidery.

The paper-cut, this exquisite form of folk art, is, for all its beauty, produced by the simplest means—sheets of paper and scissors or a sharp knife. Details of the method vary widely from district to district or according to the faney of the artist, who is usually one of the Women members of a peasant household. In their simplest form paper-cuts are made from a single sheet of coloured paper. For monochrome cuts a rich red is the most favoured colour. Sometimes cuts are made on Papers of different colours which are then pasted together. In some cases extra tints are added later by hand, while in others the whole design is cut from white paper, and the whole subsequently coloured by hand.

As might be expected, typical papercut designs depict the things most familiar in peasant life: human figures, livestock, poultry, crops and flowers, birds, fish, crabs and insects, trees and houses. The peasant artists transcend the limitations of the medium by ingeniously blending conventionalized images and startling realism.

In China, in the North and Northwest particularly, the peasants have been making paper-cuts for centuries, but the old ruling classes and the intellectuals seldom or never condescended to notice them. It was not till 1940, when teachers and students of the Lu Hsun Academy of Art in Yenan began to draw attention to the intrinsic beauty of papercuts, that people outside the villages began to take an interest in then. Artists and students started combing the countryside for specimens, accumulating a wealth of different types and designs. Since then many others have gone to the villages to learn the art from the peasants themselves, and a great number of new designs have been worked out.

Since China was liberated, paper-cuts have been constantly collected and introduced to the public by cultural and educational bodies, artists and publishers. This has been a two-way process. Artists

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Sound of Autumn By Tsung Lin

from the towns have learnt much from the peasants and enriched their own art, while the peasants have assimilated much from the towns and from other forms of decorative art.

At the exhibition many hundreds of paper-cuts were shown, from many different provinees, displayed in such a Way as to reveal the beauties and differences of the various forms. Those

from Northwest China, for example, generally take simple forms and are rough and bold in execution, whereas

those which come from south of the Yangtse are generally more delicate and subtle. Those from Northeast and North China fall midway between these extremes, and grace and neatness are their special feature.

A brief note on one or two of the most striking designs may be in place here. One paper-cut by Wang Lao-shang, a peasant from the province of Hopei, depicting typical characters from Chinese folk drama, vividly conveys the expressions and emotions of the characters. Another design entitled Sound of Autumn, by Tsung Lin from Shantung Provinee, shows a cicada cage and a spray of wistaria. Forsaken Beauty, by Pu Chiang from Chekiang, recalls the story of Wang Chao-chun, a lady-inwaiting at court in the Han Dynasty, whom the emperor forced to leave the country to marry a chieftain of the Huns.

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