Wheat-Straw Cut-and-Paste Craft

The wheat-straw cut-and-paste craft traces back to Harbin around 1883 in the Guangxu reign, when craftsmen took wheat straw through selecting, dyeing, splitting and pressing, cutting and pasting it into decorative pictures of figures, landscapes, flowers and birds, a lineage of over a hundred and forty years. The craft entered the national ICH register under traditional skills in 2014.

The craft is intricate, the straw bleached, dyed, split and flattened before being cut to a drawn pattern and pasted, making clever use of the straw's own natural sheen and grain to build a layered image of distinctive texture, the subjects often northeastern scenes or traditional auspicious motifs.

Turning the humble straw of farm work into art, the wheat-straw cut-and-paste craft shows the ingenuity and aesthetic of the northeast, an important vehicle for studying folk craft and regional culture.