Ku Shulan, a master of  paper-cut folk art in  Shaanxi Province, in the northwest, has been dubbed  “female paper-cut dab hand’by some, but to those most familiar with her, she is simply “Aunt Ku”.
    In more rarefied art circles Zhang Ding, former president of the Central Academy of Arts & Design accorded her the epithet of  “real peasant artist”. While Yang Xianrong, professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts described her ‘as a master of folk art in China, who has a profound understanding of ordinary life and inspired gifts. I think that each of her works is excellent.”
    In 1993, I had a chance to visit Aunt Ku at her home on the loess plateau. After a trek of three hours, I arrived, entering her house through the backyard.  The south facing, tile-roofed house had some coloured paper-cuts on its little wood-framed windows, which had faded over time in the sun. A string of eye-catchingly red dried chilies, was hung over the window lattice.
    “Come in, please, young man!” said the voice of an elderly woman. I walked in and as my eyes adjusted they fell on a woman with tiny feet sitting on a kang in the corner. In front of her,  was a small table with several pieces of paper in various colours. Getting up from the kang, Ku warmly greeted me in the traditional clasped hand way  and invited me  to sit beside her.
    Even though her feet were stump like, the result of the old custom of binding women's feet in childhood, Ku could often be seen out and about in her home village on the Loess Plateau in Shaanxi, invariably hurrying home with a large roll of paper.
    She usually used a large pair of scissors and never hesitated when  working on a new paper-cut. If she got part of a pattern wrong, she simply cut it off and used it somewhere else, with the finished products looking flawlessly conceived.
    Her passion for paper cutting left her with little time for either her children or neighbours, and she was often scolded by her husband for forgetting to make his meals. In 1996 she was knocked unconscious in a fall. The family, thinking she would die even prepared her coffin. But to everyone's astonishment she came to and promptly asked for her scissors.
    To welcome me, Ku sang several beautiful ballads with a passion, tinged with  something sad and almost shrill. Looking more closely at this plain and guileless master of folk art, I found that she looked older than I had imagined. She wore an old Chinese-style padded jacket with and an apron holding a pot of paste for gluing paper-cuts was tied around her waist. On a piece of shabby mat, she spread a colourful patchwork cover, another of her handicrafts.  She asked me whether I had come for her paper-cuts. I nodded and said I was eager to collect some of her  works about which I had heard much. She moved the small table and lifted the mat. Taking away a brick used as a press, she showed me a pile of paper cuttings, each about a square metre in size. "I hide these under the mat as there are too many rats in the house and they try to gnaw at my paper cuttings," explains Ku, in answer to my unspoken question.
     Ku guided me through an artistic labyrinth as she showed one after the other of her exquisite works.  I was humbled by the emotions and hopes expressed through them by this talented woman. Most were  vibrant, filled with life through their vivid designs of people, flowers, birds, animals, insects and fish.
    All Ku’s figures have large eyes, long, curving eyebrows and mouths the shape of a crescent moon.
    I asked her about the paper-cut goddess in one of them. “Haven't you realized?It's me!” she answered with confidence. Her words surprised me, but were a reminder that art should project itself originally.
    Professor Yang appraised Ku's work in the following terms: “Ku Shulan is the only first folk artist who depicts herself and to have come to realize the truth of self-appreciation while creating art works. Artistic creation helps her to restore her mind to natural instincts or individual character. Her artistic creation is not only a form of spiritual compensation, but a desire for higher ideals and aestheticism, an independent unrestrained spiritual world.”
    Ku's “paper-cut goddess” is invariably posed sitting on an altar table with candles on each side, her face serene and congenial, rather like the expression on Bodhisattva's. Ku seems to project herself in an artistic way, to a level of deification. This  unusual artistic expression is a bold and  courageous way to give herself voice. During that first visit I asked her to sing some ballads which matched the  paper cuttings.
    As she turned to each paper-cut, she sang the folk songs of her people.  The often humorous lyrics and delightful melodies told me much about her daily life and experiences. One could feel the pulse of village life when looking at the brightly coloured paper cuts with their mostly happy stories. I felt very privileged to have been able to listen to the ballads and to have had the opportunity to enjoy her poetical designs in person. I later recorded the ballads during other interviews with Ku afterwards and treasure the collection.
    I was eager to know more about her past, but of that she remained tight-lipped. Local villagers told me she was married at 15 years old. Her husband, they said, was a practical, realistic character who farmed land rented from a landlord. They depended on each other to eke out a living and bring up a family. But the hardships and poverty could not dilute Ku's aspirations and belief in a better life. She never willingly accepted her lot and placed all her high hopes into breaking the mould of drudgery through her paper cutting skills.
    Ku told me that she cut everything according to what was in her heart, not to show her traditional skills. "It's paper, not flesh. It won't ache or cry when you cut it," she said.
    I visited her nine times in all. On each occasion her life was as before.  On major public holidays, the county government would send her  charcoal, rice and wheat to convey greetings. It was on one such occasion, I collected some of her most extraordinary works through various channels.
    Ku's paper cutting uses blue, red, white, black and yellow as leading colours, and green, pink, orange and purple for specific detail.  Ku does not deviate from the Chinese traditional colour a theory used by ancient Chinese philosophers to explain the origin of the world, yin and yang, opposite principles or forces existing in nature and human affairs. Ku displays nature and life with comparison and harmony in colour, as well as the use of points and lines, which make for an eye-catching artistic impression.
    The following are our comments on her works: "While portraying profiles of key characters, she uses symmetrical lines of camber, indention and crook to back up his or her headwear or corolla. The outline for sketching the body provides us with an aesthetic feeling of the vigorously masculine, or the curvy or calabash-shaped line to show the aesthetic softness of the female. The face outline is round, the eyebrows crescent-shaped,  the eyes are big and sketched in black and complement the soft flesh-coloured nose, scarlet lips, yellow eye-whites and black pupils, with every feature compactly laid out. Such design gives a sense of harmonious beauty.One can almost feel these natural and graceful, gentle and quiet figures are communicating with each other. The flower and plant paper-cut works use more unfolded line to show the vital movement in nature."
    Ku Shulan died of illness during the cold winter of 2004 aged 84. Before her death her skills won international recognition when  the title of " Master of Chinese folk Paper-cutting" was bestowed on her by the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Her dreams of aspiring beyond the harsh realities and mundanity of rural life had proved not so fanciful.  And today Ku's paper-cuts are classified a treasure of Chinese folk art and make up one of the best collections of the genre in the world.