With her fingers flying and scissors dancing skillfully, architecture, figures, and landscapes gradually take shape in her hands as exquisite works of art. Zhao Meiling has been dedicated to paper-cutting for decades, using her skillful hands to create detailed and vivid paper-cuttings that reflect the changes of the times.
In a live-streaming room, a 65-year-old woman wearing reading glasses holds a piece of red paper and a pair of scissors, her face beaming with smiles. She interacts warmly with her fans, sharing the stories behind her paper-cuttings while meticulously demonstrating the process. This woman is Zhao Meiling, an inheritor of intangible cultural heritage from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The most distinctive feature of Zhao Meiling's paper-cutting is its "flavor," as she puts it, "My paper-cutting comes from life." In 2010, she completed a 140-meter-long paper-cutting work titled "Chronicles of a Peasant" featuring over 3,700 figures and nearly 200 houses, depicting the transformation of rural life from earthen caves to brick houses and courtyard homes.
Zhao Meiling's hometown is Da Hai Xin Village in Dalate Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a small fishing village by the Yellow River. Here, the Zhao Da Jian Rural Chronicles Paper-Cutting Art Museum is located, where her large-scale works are exhibited. Zhao Meiling explains, "The first step in paper-cutting is to understand what story the work is going to tell. For example, the people and events in 'Chronicles of a Peasant' are mostly real experiences from my own life and those of ordinary people around me."
Initially, when creating large-scale works, Zhao Meiling encountered many challenges: repetitive patterns, uncoordinated overall effects, and incoherent narratives. After numerous attempts, she has now mastered the skill. In "Chronicles of a Peasant," Zhao Meiling uses the passage of time as the narrative thread, highlighting the positive changes in farmers' lives.
After selecting the right story, Zhao Meiling hand-draws the composition for each part. "To do paper-cutting well, you must first be a good painter," she says. Each time she draws, she wears reading glasses, leaning close to the paper, carefully and meticulously outlining every detail.
The reporter observed that in her works, images and text are perfectly integrated, and scenes and characters transcend time and space, giving viewers a sense of being there. After completing the design, the next step is cutting. Zhao Meiling uses a unique special carving knife. "Compared to ordinary scissors, this knife requires a different angle of force and cutting sequence. Coordinating both hands is not easy, and it demands higher skill," she explains. Although her works can be hundreds of meters long, the details in each piece are vividly depicted. "Paper-cutting usually only has two colors, red and white, so you have to show movement and detail through these two colors," Zhao Meiling says. In her creations, she combines various techniques such as draft paper-cutting, multi-layer paper-cutting, and colored paper-cutting to produce detailed and vivid works that reflect the changes of the times.
Zhao Meiling's paper-cutting skills are family-inherited. Her aunt and grandmother were both well-known paper-cutting masters in the area. Influenced by her family, Zhao Meiling diligently learned traditional paper-cutting skills from a young age. "When I was a child, our family couldn't afford red paper, so my sisters and I practiced with newspapers and straw paper," she recalls. When she first got married, her family didn't support her paper-cutting, thinking it was "useless," but she persisted with determination.
Now, Zhao Meiling is more focused on letting more people know the charm of paper-cutting and passing on the skills. Under her leadership, many local young people have begun to participate in the inheritance of paper-cutting skills, and her team has gradually grown. "Now my students, including the younger generation in my family, are all fully engaged. I believe the future of paper-cutting will be brighter," she says.
When asked about her future plans, Zhao Meiling admits, "I still want to keep up with the times." Nowadays, the 65-year-old craftswoman actively embraces network technology and has started live-streaming. The number of viewers in her live-streaming room has grown from dozens to thousands. "I plan to move the museum online in the future, so that people can see my paper-cutting works from the comfort of their homes," she says.