Inside a small rural house in Henan Province, a boy smeared some noodle soup on the wall. Thwack — he stuck a paper-cutting on it. About twenty centimeters away, thwack — another one. Seven-year-old Chang Yangyang had turned the earthen wall of his rural home into his own exhibition hall — and then was chased around the yard by his mother, getting a good scolding. Back then, he had no idea that this scolded afternoon would become the starting point of his paper-cutting journey, a journey that has now lasted 27 years.
Born in 1991 in a rural village in Henan Province, Chang Yangyang, like other young people from his village, went south to work in factories in his late teens. While others spent their time in internet cafes playing games, he would sit quietly in a corner of the dormitory, scissors in hand, learning from the memory of his grandmother and the elderly neighbor ladies who used to cut paper when he was a child. There were no art classes or hobby groups in the countryside. Paper-cutting was the form of entertainment Chang Yangyang had found for himself since childhood.
The moment he truly realized that "paper-cutting is more than just paper-cutting" came in 2010.
At that time, he was still working on a factory assembly line. One day, on an online forum, he came across a call for entries for the Chinese New Year customs paper-cutting competition. The competition called for depictions of New Year's customs from across the country. He immediately thought of the rhyming folk sayings his grandmother used to chant when he was little, "On the 23rd, make offerings to the Kitchen God; on the 24th, clean the house; on the 25th, make tofu; on the 26th, buy meat; on the 27th, slaughter the rooster; on the 28th, knead and leaven the dough; on the 29th, paste paper flowers..."
He cut those New Year's folk rhymes into pictures. When he sent the package off from his factory dormitory, he probably never expected to win a third-place prize.
That award made him suddenly understand — paper-cutting was not just a way for elderly ladies to kill time. It was a cultural art. Something worth preserving. At that moment, a thought took root in his heart, "Should I make paper-cutting my work and my career?"
The path that followed was one he cut out for himself, millimeter by millimeter, with his scissors.
He traveled across China and went abroad, eventually becoming a provincial-level inheritor of intangible cultural heritage in Henan Province. But he doesn't like to dwell on the word "inheritance." He prefers to say he's "playing" — "Just playing at something I love, and keep playing." He played, time passed, his body of work grew, and soon enough, it even provided him with a comfortable living.
He speaks of "preserving the essence while innovating" — preserving the old ways and the cultural meanings of his grandmother's generation; innovating by drawing on and developing themes from a deep understanding of tradition. "You have to know where your roots are," he says.
Now 35, he reflects that a human life lasts maybe seventy or eighty years. He's already halfway through. For the remainder, he doesn't want to set himself grand goals. He wants to be a free and happy person, traveling as a backpacker with his scissors to places he's never been, to see the landscapes and ways of life he's never experienced beyond his village in Luoyang.
He wants to document the years with his scissors — one year, two years, three years — cutting out the mark of each Chinese zodiac sign, each passing year. Because for Chang Yangyang, paper-cutting has never been a task. It is joy itself.
(Reporter: Kiki; Filming: Sammi, Anna Li; Video Editor: Anna Li; Editor: Kiki; English Editor: Darius, Kiki; Producer: Tracy)
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