Death By 1,000 Cuts: The Mysteries of Papercutting
For the December issue of the Beijinger, we sent our editors out to try their hand at traditional Chinese crafts. An excerpt of their experiences was featured in the magazine. The following is the full version of their story.
It was a scene common to Chinese history: a skillful older woman passing on her knowledge of an intricate art to a younger female disciple. However, the outcome of my first Chinese paper-cutting class with Gift of Hope was unlikely to affect my marriage prospects.
This was fortunate for me, as becoming a masterful paper-cutter would require a kind of precision and patience I'm not sure I possess. Equipped with a tiny pair of scissors and a square of red paper, I started with shuang xi, the symbol for double happiness. That’s the image you see adorning windows and doors whenever there’s been a wedding.
They say that Chinese are crazy about this character because it indicates love and luck. But I assume its popularity is also derived from the fact that snipping a piece of red paper into a shuang xi is about as simple as making paper snowflakes or paper dolls. It’s the kind of thing you could pull out as a dinner-party trick to impress your fellow cosmopolites with your worldliness ... if you were a wanker.
The same can not be said for the more complicated patterns that are often used to spruce up this image. You can’t really call yourself a paper-cut artiste until you’re creating your own designs. But even copying and cutting someone else’s scene involves some serious scissor work.
Having graduated from straight lines, I was given a pre-traced butterfly to cut out. The task was not as infantile as it may sound. It involved the challenge of ever-so-slowly slicing tiny wedges and consistent lines, and constantly resisting the temptation to pull out bits of paper that don't fall off immediately.
When you’re ready to take off your stencil training-wheels, there is even more potential for screwing up. An oversight of one millimeter can leave you a dove without a toe, a butterfly without an antenna, a flower without a stigma. And you certainly can’t correct your boo-boos with a bit of glue or sticky-tape.
It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of the intricate paper-cuts you see around Beijing are machine-made, since this traditional craft is clearly not the kind of thing you can do in a rush. Perhaps a bit of therapeutic paper-cutting – slow, steady and patient – is just what we all need.
Personally, though, I think it carries too many health risks for me to continue. If I ever managed to produce one of those enormous, elaborate images, only to slip up at the end, it would be far too easy for me to literally stab myself in the face.
Price and venue: RMB 160/two-hour session, Gift of Hope
The rewards of persevering: It’s not complicated to start and produce something beautiful, but you’ll need years of practice to perfect your craft.
Click here to see the December issue of the Beijinger in full.
Photos: Judy Zhou
