A snip here, a cut there

Intangible cultural heritage of Daixian

After that, she was transferred from the kindergarten, where she had also honed her paper-cutting skills, to the Youth Activity Center of Daixian county of Xinzhou to teach paper-cutting to the students. Five years before her transfer, in 2007 to be precise, Daixian paper-cutting was recognized as an intangible cultural heritage of Xinzhou.

Zhang and her husband founded a paper-cutting company in 2012. And thanks to her achievements and contribution to the traditional art, Zhang was identified as an inheritor of the cultural heritage in 2014.

Whether the ancient art form will survive in the information age is a question that has always haunted Zhang. To develop her company's core competitiveness, Zhang learned the nuances and gained advanced knowledge of the fine arts from Zhang Jun, a local fine arts master in Daixian. Zhang Jun also helped her greatly improve her paper-cutting designs.

In 2014, Zhang Yansong went to Yuxian county in Shanxi's neighboring province of Hebei to learn multi-layer paper-cutting skills from a local master, Li Min. While Daixian paper-cutting focuses on details, Yuxian paper-cutting lays more emphasis on shapes. Zhang believes it is important to draw on both styles' strengths to become a better artist.

The learning and training she received from the masters have broadened her vision and paper-cutting style and designs, which encouraged her to try her hand at creating scenic spots using her paper-cutting skills. She has successfully produced such scenic spots as the Yungang Grottoes in Datong and Yanmen Pass, both in Shanxi, and other folk art patterns in a bid to spread the Shanxi culture across the country.

Real turning point in Zhang's career

In July 2017, Zhang's works were exhibited at the Prince Kung's Palace Museum in Beijing, thanks to a poverty alleviation project sponsored by the museum. At the museum, Zhang demonstrated an exclusive paper-cutting technique, "just one cut", before visitors. Using just one cut of the scissors, she could make any of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs. Her "tricks" enchanted the visitors so much that the 30-odd paper-cutting works she had taken to the exhibition were sold out in less than an hour.

"At first, I was not that confident about our creations in a city like Beijing. So I carried only a small part of our inventory to the museum," Zhang said.

The response she got at the Beijing exhibition boosted Zhang's confidence, as well as that of her colleagues, and assured them about the future. Minutely studying the customers' feedback, Zhang created more than 2,000 new designs of 40 different kinds within a short time. Today, the retail outlet in the museum has become the main sales channel for her products in Beijing.

To attract more customers, Zhang explores new contents, and adds new elements to the products to increase their appeal. For instance, her portraits of the Chinese gold medalists at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics (which was held in 2021) proved very popular.

But Zhang's quest is not limited to creating new designs or attracting more customers for her products. She teaches local farmers the basic paper-cutting skills for free, and makes the designs herself according to the customers' requirements. And the farmers cut the paper following her designs and instructions. Thanks to her efforts, at least 300 local families have lifted themselves out of poverty in recent years.