The history of paper-cutting in Yu County, Hebei Province and the necessity of commercialization of paper-cutting in Yu County
Paper-cutting in Yuxian County, Hebei Province is a wonderful work among the colorful paper-cutting arts in my country. It is a typical representative of colorful paper-cutting and is commonly known as "Yuxian Window Decoration". This is because it mainly has five application forms in real life: window flowers, embroidery patterns, yin and yang flowers, happy flowers, and colorful flowers, among which window flowers are the most used, most common, and most representative type. The production of Yuxian paper-cutting is mainly based on negative carving, supplemented by positive carving. It combines yin and yang, plus color dyeing. The work is more real than virtual, with more surfaces than lines, and the colors are rich and beautiful. Yuxian paper-cutting is made with a carving knife. Depending on the complexity of the pattern, dozens to a hundred pieces can be carved at a time. Paper-cutting requires a lot of physical strength. The artists are mainly male workers, so it is also called "a mans art". ". It was produced in Yuxian County, Hebei Province in the 1860s. It is based on the local traditional mica thin-cut window grilles and embroidery patterns, and absorbs the artistic essence of Wuqiang wood-block watermark window grilles and Yangliuqing paintings to create and develop. "From the beginning of the 20th century to the eve of the founding of New China, through the tempering of a large number of outstanding artists, the style began to be finalized and the skills became mature." In the early days of the founding of New China, the governments attention and the research of professional art workers led to the emergence of paper-cutting creation in Yu County A gratifying new situation. During the Cultural Revolution, the development and inheritance of paper-cutting in Yu County suffered serious setbacks. Since the reform and opening up, it has been in its development and prosperity stage. It is famous at home and abroad for its vivid shapes, brilliant colors, fine carving and dyeing techniques, and rich regional characteristics.
Since the 20th century, the emergence and development of high and new technologies has greatly improved productivity, and human production methods and lifestyles have undergone tremendous changes. The cultural and ecological environment of traditional folk art has been severely damaged. The creation and inheritance of art have also been greatly impacted, resulting in many precious folk art categories shrinking or even on the verge of extinction with the development of modern society. However, despite this worrying situation, Yu Countys paper-cutting skills have been passed down to this day, and the team of practitioners continues to grow, attracting widespread attention from the literary and art circles. In the early 20th century, farmers in Yu County “who could not afford to raise livestock used their leisure time to carefully carve window grilles and organize their families toLarge and small participate in this kind of production, which is light on costs and heavy on profits. "After the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, "according to the materials from a symposium on window grill artists held by the Federation of Literary and Art Circles of Chahar Province in 1952, there were 29 people in Yu County at that time, including Wang Mi, Zhou Kai, Hou Lin, and Wang Shoudiao." This group of backbone forces inherited the tradition in the creation of window grilles and designed and produced opera masks for window grilles. According to the statistics of the 2009 "Yuxian Paper-cutting Industry Association Work Report", "16 of the 22 towns in the county are distributed in 96 administrative villages. There are many paper-cutting artists, including 28 professional paper-cutting villages, more than 1,100 paper-cutting households, and more than 30,000 employees; the annual output is more than 3 million sets of paper-cutting, and the annual income is more than 90 million yuan. "Obviously, Yuxian paper-cutting has embarked on the road of industrial development and "become a key product and an important pillar industry of the regional characteristic economy." Mr. Feng Jidian, a famous cultural scholar and chairman of the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association, summarized the current situation of Chinese folk culture There are three types: "dead", "endangered" and "living". After ten years of inspection of Chinese folk paper-cutting, he believes that "Weiwei County paper-cutting is alive".
Commercialization played a very key role in the emergence, development and inheritance of Yuxian paper-cutting. Commercialization is a concept in economics, which refers to the behavior of producing a certain product as a means and with profit as the main purpose. It expands all activities that are conducive to production into goods and services and exchanges them, thereby using economic means to support peoples preparation and innovation activities for production. Commercialization can unleash peoples creativity to create more and better goods and services for peoples consumption. While meeting peoples needs, it can absorb labor and provide employment opportunities for paper-cutting artists. Yuxian paper-cutting skills were formed and established thanks to commercialization, and were developed and inherited in commercial production, and have been well protected.
