The Party secretary of a village in Guangling county, Shanxi province, has developed a paper-cutting technique that combines traditional craft with modern art and which has made this traditional folk art more vivid and true to life that it has earned a State patent.

The patent is held by both Wang Zengrong, 56, the Party secretary, and Li Min, a famous paper-cut painter, with both of them researching multilayer techniques for more than one year to explore the artistic and commercial potential of the folk art. They got the patent in May 2010, the first of its kind for Chinese paper-cuts. The new technique uses multiple layers in different colors to produce a resemblance to a subject and capture its subtleties, for example, facial expressions, at the same time. Landscapes can also be preserved by this folk handicraft.

And, now, thanks to industrial production, the paper-cuts of Guangling county have found markets abroad and local enterprises were among the China’s major cultural product exporters in the 2011-2012 period.

Nine Guangling products made their debut on an advertisement that was shown on major domestic media recently.

Edited by Roger Bradshaw