A perfect combination of Chinese classics and paper cuttings.

Six intangible cultural heritage paper cutting masters spent 433 days applying the paper cutting skills that have been passed down over 3,000 years, creatively blending their work with the memories of Tang, Song, and Yuan verse, offering insights on their expressions of Asian beauty.

In this book, six masters are invited to collaborate on creative works in the tradition of six national intangible cultural heritage forms that are on the verge of extinction, including Gaomi paper cutting, Yuxian paper cutting, Horinger paper cutting, Fuyang paper cutting, Guangling paper cutting, and Fangzheng paper cutting. The art of paper cutting is used to create artistic conceptions of Tang, Song, and Yuan verse, offering new insights into those poetic traditions.

Yuan Xiaocha, born in the 1990s, holds a master’s degree from Renmin University of China. She is passionately obsessed with traditional culture, and she has a unique take on Chinese poetry, painting, and traditional art forms. She has edited the Belt and Road Painting Dunhuang series and won the 2016 Guizhou Good Book Award. Her series Painting to Pass the Time won the 2015 National Intellectual Property Patent Award. She has translated 13 books, including Your Voice Can Change the World.Ni Xiumei has inherited the Fangzheng paper cutting style from Heilongjiang, with its strong, natural, generous patterns and their clear artistic expression. Zhang Duotang has inherited the Guangling paper cutting style from Shanxi, the fourth generation heir of the family that founded the form. The composition of this style is vivid, the knifework exquisite, and the materials and dyeing unique and of fine quality. Cheng Xinghong has inherited the paper cutting style of Fuyang, Anhui, which balances rigidity with flexibility, mellowness with flavor, delicacy with roughness, and beauty with simplicity. It is unique for incorporating northern and southern paper cutting styles into a hybrid form. Fan Zuoxin has inherited the simple, exaggerated Gaomi paper cutting style from Shandong, which displays elegance in roughness and intricacy in simplicity. Zhou Shuying has inherited the unique dotted paper cutting style of Yuxian County in Hebei, the only form based on and supplemented by intangible carving. Duan Jianjun is an inheritor of the Inner Mongolian Horinger paper cutting form, which employs a zigzag pattern, crescent pattern, or raindrop pattern as appropriate, bringing some of its decorative patterns out very strikingly.