The photo shows that an elderly man touches up a replica of a "window" decorated with paper cuttings depicting Spring Festival customs at a folk art museum in Taiyuan, north China?s capital of Shanxi Province. The "window" is among the 200-odd artworks to be shipped to Denmark for an exhibition during the Spring Festival holidays.
Traditional Chinese paper-cut for window decoration is usually of small size, ranging from several centimeters to dozens of centimeters. Its works put emphasis on the transparent effect after being hollowed out. The pattern includes the single ones and compound ones.
The compound paper-cut is mainly a series of paper-cut of folk subjects and looks like a picture story. In addition, there are corner paper-cuts, used to decorate the four corners of the window.
Paper-cut for window decoration has substantial content, which mainly includes birds and beasts, flowers and fish, scenery and figures and other happy patterns such as "Phoenix and Peony," "the Cow Boy and Woman Weaver," and "the Eight Immortals."
(china.org.cn January 16, 2002)
