Yueqing Fine-Pattern Paper-Cutting

Yueqing fine-pattern paper-cutting grew out of paper-cutting, rooted in the folk "dragon-boat flower" of Yueqing in Wenzhou, with over seven hundred years of history and praised as the southern-school representative of Chinese paper-cutting. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006 and in 2009, as part of "Chinese paper-cut," was inscribed on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

The artisan carves hair-fine geometric and floral patterns on a few inches of rice paper with a cutting knife, sometimes dozens of cuts to the inch, the patterns dense as hair and exquisitely open, often adorning dragon-boat lanterns in a craft of extraordinary finery and precision.

Yueqing fine-pattern paper-cutting is a peerless representative of Chinese paper-cutting; its intricate patterns carry the Ou-Yue dragon-boat belief and folk aesthetics, of real value for studying the folk art and festival customs of southern Zhejiang.