Whispers in Paper

Papercutting was a childhood pastime of mine. Back then, my knife was no more than a worn razor blade my father had discarded, and the finest paper I could find was leftover red sheets from hand-painted propaganda banners. I carved familiar forms—fruits and vegetables, trees and birds, flowers and animals, the twelve zodiac creatures, and iconic figures: Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall, and characters from Beijing operas.

Years passed. It wasn’t until the seventh winter after I arrived in the United States—specifically in 1997—that I found my way back to papercutting. A series of fierce snowstorms and days of biting cold kept me indoors. In that stillness, surrounded by drifts of white and the faint hum of that distant land, I reached once more for the blade and paper. What had long been set aside, returned quietly, as if it had never left.

On nights with stars or without, with the moon or in its absence - when I long for it, the scenes I cherish rise before me, close at hand. Beneath the glow of a lamp, I lay a sheet of paper on the cutting mat. Sometimes I trace, sometimes I reimagine, sometimes I simply draw what drifts up from my mind’s eye. Then, cut by cut, I begin.

Papercutting is a process of quiet joy and deep calm. Through thousands of careful, intricate repetitions, my fingers grow a little numb, yet my mind, as if in meditation, settles into stillness. It warms me, this gentle immersion in the tender entanglement with all things. A quiet ecstasy, a wordless intimacy, a way of being quietly and fully intertwined with the world.