Qingyang paper-cutting has a wide range of themes, a wide variety of types, and rich content. Inheriting the ancient folk art tradition, its style is simple and rustic, rough and unrestrained, simple and bright, and boldly exaggerated and freely decorated. In Qingyang, during festivals, weddings, and full-moon birthday celebrations, rural women have to clean the courtyard, paper the walls, and cut paper to make window flowers. Paste various red and green paper-cut flowers on the window frames, kang surrounds, walls, and door panels to make their rooms colorful and prosperous. These paper-cut flowers have different names depending on the location of the posting. Those posted on the door are called door flowers, those posted on the window are called window flowers, those posted on the kang wall are called kang surround flowers, and those posted on the ceiling are called ceiling flowers. Walking into the Qingyang farmhouse, paper-cut flowers posted on the wall can be seen everywhere. On the window frames and kang surrounds of some cave houses that are no longer inhabited, paper-cut flowers that have been blackened by fireworks are still firmly posted there. Paper-cutting is as indispensable as grains in Qingyang. Wherever there are people, there are paper-cut flowers. Paper-cutting has become a spiritual support for rural women in Qingyang to beautify their lives and express their emotions. Windows, doors, kiln walls, and kang surrounds have become an art world for women to show their skills. Qingyang paper-cutting originates from life and pays attention to interest. It is the crystallization of the production and living customs and cultural heritage of working women, and the flowers watered by their love. Mr. Jin Zhilin, a famous folklorist, called paper-cutting artists "real artists." He also said, "Qingyang paper-cutting provides us with extremely rich new topics in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, history, ethnology, folklore, aesthetics, and art. A traditional Longdong folk paper-cut is not only a paper-cut, but also a crystallization of the historical and cultural traditions of the Chinese nation for thousands of years." Historical Development Qingyang paper-cutting has a long history and has long been influential at home and abroad. As early as the Han Dynasty, with the invention of papermaking, the art of paper-cutting using paper to cut human images to replace living people began. In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the use of paper-cutting was further expanded. People cut out the images of Qin Qiong and Jingde from paper and pasted them on the door as door gods to ward off evil spirits. Since then, the art of paper-cutting has continued to evolve, the subject matter has continued to expand, and the use has continued to increase, from exorcising evil spirits in the palace to folk life. As the capital of the time, Qingyang was one of the first areas where paper-cutting art emerged. After the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, paper-cutting continued to develop and mature. In 1930, the "Five Blessings Holding Longevity" created by Hu Xianchuan (female) of Qingcheng County was published in the "Polish Pictorial", and Qingyang paper-cutting went abroad for the first time. In 1942, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Government organized professionals to collect and organize Qingyang folk paper-cutting. After liberation, Gu Yuan, the president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, drew on Qingyang paper-cutting and created many precious woodcuts. These woodcuts influenced Qingyang paper-cutting and brought new improvements to Qingyang paper-cutting. In 1959, Qingcheng County compiled and printed the book "Qingyang Folk Paper-cutting", which was loved and praised by experts at the National Mass Art Conference held in Xifeng. In 1985, Liaoning Fine Arts Publishing House published Wang Guangpu's "Longdong Folk Paper-cutting", which once again introduced Qingyang paper-cutting to the whole country. The content is drawn from Qingyang paper-cutting, and the material is broad. The sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers, flowers and trees, people, birds and beasts, stories and legends are all materials for paper-cutting. In particular, the male and female dolls, cattle, sheep, mules, horses, pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits, fruits and vegetables in the sacred land of the family courtyard, because they are seen every day and observed deeply, they have become permanent themes under the scissors of women. They decorate and beautify the family environment by choosing and cutting these themes, and express their understanding and feelings of life. The content of Qingyang paper-cutting is rich and colorful. There are "Two Dragons Playing with Pearls", "Camels Bringing in Treasures", "Pictures of Auspicious Beasts", and "Magu Offering Longevity" that express auspiciousness and reflect traditional folk customs; there are "Peacock Playing with Peony", "Butterfly Loves Flowers", "Magpie Stepping on Plum Blossoms", and "Fish Drilling Lotus" that reflect reproduction and beautiful love; there are "Tiger Going Down the Mountain", "Lion Rolling Embroidered Balls", "Chubby Dolls", and "Sending Blessing Dolls" that bless peace and happiness and pray for blessings from mythical beasts; there are folk stories such as "Liu Hai Playing with Golden Toad", "Wu Song Fighting the Tiger", and "Wang Xiang Lying on Ice"; there are wheat ears, grain ears, melons and fruits, peaches and apricots that express love for the fruits of labor, etc. These works have a strong local flavor, reflecting the living customs of people on the Loess Plateau, and are full of their understanding, feelings, love and pursuit of life. Types of techniques Qingyang paper-cutting has flexible expression techniques and skilled paper-cutting skills. The colors are mainly red and green, and there are single color, overprint, dyeing, etc. There are positive cutting, which leaves lines to outline the image, and negative cutting, which cuts the lines to leave the plane. There are yin and yang cutting, which is a combination of the two, symmetrical cutting by folding paper, shadow cutting, pattern cutting, etc. In order to make the lines rich and varied, the artists also created and used plum blossom patterns, cloud hook patterns, sawtooth patterns, field patterns, crescent patterns, dot patterns, water patterns, and patterns. With a pair of dexterous hands, they cut life into various forms, lively, affectionate, interesting and poetic. Qingyang paper-cutting has many types. The content varies according to different uses. Generally, there are festive paper-cutting, etiquette paper-cutting, disease-removing paper-cutting, life paper-cutting, longevity paper-cutting, wedding paper-cutting, reproductive paper-cutting, interesting paper-cutting, funeral paper-cutting, pattern paper-cutting, base pattern paper-cutting and modern production labor paper-cutting, etc. Most of these paper-cuts have patterns, which are passed down from generation to generation from their ancestors. Careful women put the patterns in magazines and books and regard them as heirlooms. Most of the paper-cutting authors in Qingyang are illiterate rural women. Even some of the "paper-cutting masters" named by the Chinese Folklore Society are not very literate, and some are completely illiterate. They learned their skills from their elders. Rural girls have been learning paper-cutting from their grandmothers and mothers since they were five or six years old. They can hold scissors at the age of fifteen or sixteen. "Girls in their twenties learn needlework and skillfully cut patterns passed down by hundreds of families." Artistic characteristics Qingyang paper-cutting is simple and unsophisticated, rough and unrestrained, simple and bright, and has refined lines. Compared with similar folk paper-cutting in the country, it has unique characteristics. One is the remains of primitive totem culture. Qingyang is located at the intersection of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces, far away from big cities, with poor transportation, and is rarely affected by foreign culture. Dragon culture, with the dragon as a symbol of life as a totem, and deer culture, with the deer as a totem, are almost extinct in other parts of the country, but have been continued and preserved in Qingyang paper-cutting. For example, "human-headed fish", "divine fish bottle" and "baby fish" are all the inheritance of primitive culture with fish, dragon and snake as totems. The paper-cutting "longevity flower" has both the primitive totem form of the deer head pattern and is developing towards the plant form of the tree of life. The axially symmetrical paper-cutting "Tree of Life" (Fusang tree) with two birds is a widely circulated pattern in the Han Dynasty. What is shocking is that the folk customs and patterns of the ancestors in the Han Dynasty have been hidden in Qingyang paper-cutting and passed down. This is unique in the national folk paper-cutting. Second, it is the carrier of the ancient Yin-Yang philosophy. Western philosophy understands the world from the perspective of natural science, while Chinese classical philosophy understands the world from the perspective of Yin-Yang, forming the Yin-Yang and Five Elements theory. Qingyang paper-cutting reveals the mystery of the Yin-Yang philosophy that is deeply rooted in the Chinese nation. The "Heaven and earth were opened up, the yang and clear became the sky, and the yin and turbid became the earth" in "Yi Shi" refers to the philosophy of yin and yang. There are also philosophical concepts in Qingyang that men are yang, women are yin; south is yang, north is yin; left is yang, right is yin, etc. Qi Xiumei, a master of Zhenyuan paper-cutting art, cuts out "Zhuaji Doll", holding a chicken in one hand and a fish in the other, or a chicken in one hand and a rabbit in the other, which are all reflections of the philosophical concept of using chickens, rabbits, or chickens and fish to symbolize the sun, moon, heaven and earth. In addition, paper-cuts such as "Double Fish Pillow" and "Tiger-headed Toad" are carriers of the ancient philosophy of yin and yang. The third is the "paper fossils" of ancient cultural relics. Qingyang is a huge treasure house of ancient culture and the cradle of the Chinese nation, which contains unique ancient culture. Qingyang paper-cutting not only reveals the mysteries of ancient culture, but also inherits the information of ancient culture. It is a rare "paper fossil" of ancient cultural relics. Ning County paper-cutting "Eight Diagrams Doll" is a witchcraft paper-cutting for praying for a good harvest during the Spring Festival. The "Eight Diagrams Doll" holds wheat in both hands and has a spider web of the sun on its head, symbolizing that the sun shines on all things and grows. It carries the ancient culture of life worship and sun worship, and is a relic of the sun worship of the Yan Emperor tribe in primitive society, and a "paper fossil" of ancient cultural relics. Fourth, it has a unique aesthetic consciousness. The aesthetic consciousness of Qingyang folk paper-cutting is deformed. It does not seek truth, but is good at exaggeration; it does not conform to 1, and the shape is deformed; it does not seek to be lifelike in shape, but only to be concise and vivid; it does not seek to have all four limbs, but to express its ideas freely. The donkey in the paper-cutting "Returning to My Mother's Home" has only three legs, and the other leg was deleted at will. In the eyes of the artists, the donkey walks on three legs, and the other leg is redundant. In the "Cat Eats Mouse" they cut, the eaten mouse is still alive in the cat's stomach, and people can still see it through the cat's belly. This is not only a bold and peculiar conception and imagination, but also a manifestation of the abnormal aesthetic consciousness of ancient times. Qingyang folk paper-cutting is gaining more and more attention and popularity from the society. People's Daily, Guangming Daily, Art Research, Folk Literature, Paper-cutting Newspaper, Gansu Daily and other newspapers and magazines have published Qingyang folk paper-cutting works for many times. In 1986, the Central Academy of Fine Arts invited Qi Xiumei, a folk art master from Zhenyuan County, to Beijing for folk art teaching exchanges and demonstrated folk paper-cutting to students. Experts said excitedly: "The real art is among the people", and Dean Gu Yuan said: "I was influenced and inspired by folk art before I embarked on the professional art path". Artists from France, Japan, Australia and other countries have made special trips to Longdong many times to investigate folk paper-cutting art. Qingyang folk paper-cutting has gone from being a gadget in the hands of rural women to entering the national art hall, the China Folk Art Museum, and has been exhibited in Japan, Italy, Australia and other countries. At the first China Qingyang Sachet Folk Culture Festival in June 2002, Qingyang paper-cutting received unanimous praise from experts at home and abroad, and Qingyang City was named "Hometown of Folk Paper-cutting" by the Chinese Folklore Society. In 2004, Qingyang paper-cutting was included in the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection List