Near the Flaming Mountains in Turpan, Xinjiang.
The invention of paper was in the Western Han Dynasty (6th century B.C.), before which the art of paper-cutting could not have appeared, but at that time, people used thin sheet materials, made of artifacts by hollowing out and carving techniques, but as early as when there was no paper has been popular, that is, carving, hollowing out, picking, carving, cutting techniques in the gold leaf, leather, silk, and even in the foliage of the tree cut patterns.
The Historical Records of the cut Tong Feng Di described the early Western Zhou Dynasty King Cheng with the sycamore leaves cut into a "kui" given to his brother, sealed Ji Yu to Tang as a marquis. During the Warring States period, there is leather skeletonization, (Hubei Jiang Ling Wangshan one of the excavated artifacts of the Chu Tomb), silver foil skeletonization carving (Henan Huixian solid surrounded by one of the excavated artifacts of the village of the Warring States ruins), with paper-cutting and the same withdrawal, their emergence of the formation of folk paper-cutting has laid a certain foundation.
There is a poem in Mulan Diction of the North and South Dynasties, which says, "I am sticking yellow flowers on the mirror". The earliest discovery of paper-cutting in China is the discovery of five flower cut-outs from the Northern Dynasties (386-581 AD), unearthed near the Flaming Mountain in Turpan, Xinjiang. These paper cuttings, use repetitive folding and a treatment in which the images do not obscure each other.
Translation: dressing up in a mirror.?
Expansion:
Modern development of paper-cutting:
In 1944, in the Shanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region also exhibited for the first time in the northwestern region of the folk of the new paper-cutting works for the establishment of the new China after the development of the art of paper-cutting has opened the prelude. It can be said that Yan'an paper-cutting created a new era of Chinese paper-cutting.
After the founding of new China, under the guidance of "let a hundred flowers blossom, push forward the new" literary and artistic policy, artists created a large number of new paper-cutting to express the socialist new people and new things, opening up the way of paper-cutting, but also enriched the form and content of the decorative arts of Chinese folk. In addition to the creation of new paper-cutting to express the new atmosphere of all walks of life in addition to paper-cutting, children, sports, acrobatics, song and dance have also become the most common themes of paper-cutting.
Baidu Encyclopedia - The Art of Paper Cutting
Baidu Encyclopedia - Chinese Paper Cutting