Since then, Zhou has never dared to relax a little bit when cutting. Even now when Zhou picks up the knife, he has the briefest flicker of a thought that his father might be standing behind, and feels cold air around his neck.

Zhou's family suffered as badly as others during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). The Red Guard burnt most of his father's works. Zhou said his father cried a lot in private.

Even though it was illegal to paper-cut at that time, there was still a demand for the handicrafts, especially when the Spring Festival came.

So, Zhou, along with his mother and younger brother, covered windows with their quilts to do the work, and sold them on the black market to help the family survive.

In 1972, Zhou and his father were recruited by the Nan Zhang Zhuang Town Paper-cutting Factory to make the products for export. In order to earn more income, Zhou threw himself into his new job and doubled his working hours from 8 to 16 per day. His intolerable workload later caused pleurisy, and his fianc left him because of his illness.

However, this misfortune hasn't turned him sour towards the art. On the contrary, his skill improved significantly due to the intensive work. He is very proud of his ability to cut out a tiny woman's face - about 5mm in diameter - on the pattern of a vase.

Zhou opened his own factory in 1985, and his products are exported worldwide.

According to Zhou, YCP was welcomed by the masses, and was used as bookmarks and the window decorations in the past, to celebrate traditional festivals and family weddings.

Now the art form has become popular among businessmen and has been introduced to top hotels for room decorations instead of paintings.

This April, Zhou received orders to make hand-sized paper-cuttings of Fuwa mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The output has reached more than 10,000 sets so far.

The father of three worries about finding the right candidate to inherit the art, although he has taught more than 200 students from all over the country.

"My children are too busy at school and don't have time to learn the skill as I did in the past," he says.

"But I have no problem to pass on my skills to outsiders. It is a matter not about who will inherit the art, it is about to make the art survive forever."

Currently, there are more than 1,100 paper-cutting specialists in Yuxian County, with 28,000 employees. The annual yield stands at 3 million sets.