The History of Chaoyang Paper-cutting

About the origin time of Chaoyang folk paper-cutting, the relevant literature failed to find an exact record. However, judging from the theme and knife method of paper-cut works, the emergence and development of Chaoyang folk paper-cut may have been brought and developed by the Central Plains immigrants who moved to Chaoshan during the Yongjia Rebellion in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In 1980s, Chaoyang Cultural Center collected more than 500 folk paper-cut works. One of the bats cut from brown silk paper is the earliest folk paper-cut work in Chaoyang. Chaoyang paper-cutting has a history of hundreds of years. With the development of the times, it has experienced ups and downs and thrived several times, but its ecological chain has never broken. Just like in the "Breaking Four Classics" movement in the early days of liberation, artists who loved paper-cutting never put scissors aside, but also protected themselves and their ancestral paper-cutting works as their lives. For mass cultural workers, an invisible inheritance chain also runs through it. From 1986 to now, the staff of mass cultural centers such as Liu Qiben, Weng Mushun and Lin Rongkun have made great efforts to rescue, inherit and protect this excellent traditional art with a high sense of responsibility. Excavate, collect and sort out Chaoyang paper-cut, discuss and summarize its historical origin, style and distribution, actively compile paper-cut works, hold paper-cut exhibitions and write papers to expand its popularity and influence. From declaring the hometown of paper-cutting to Chaoyang paper-cutting becoming a national intangible heritage protection, they have paid a lot of energy and sweat. At the same time, they don't forget to train successors. From the excavation and cultivation of kindergarten teachers' cutting skills in Chaoyang Yiliyuan in the 1990s to the cultivation and promotion of a group of paper-cutting rookies with cultural centers as the key bases, it is remarkable and fruitful. In recent years, paper-cutting has also been included in children's art courses in cultural centers to ensure that the ecological chain of inheritance will never break.