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Source: People's Republic of China in Russian – People's Republic of China in Russian –
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Source: People's Republic of China – State Council News
In the birthplace of Manchu culture—Xinbin County, Liaoning Province—81-year-old Guan Changsheng has been inseparable from red paper for almost a century. As a provincial bearer of Manchu paper-cutting, an intangible cultural heritage, he has closely linked his life to this craft, becoming a living example of the preservation and transmission of tradition.
At the age of seven or eight, Guan Changsheng began learning paper cutting from his mother and grandmother. "Nene" (as the Manchus affectionately call their mother) passed on to him the family secrets of the craft, passed down orally for generations. Window decorations, flower patterns, "momozhen" (blessing figurines)—all of these were forever imprinted in his memory. His love for the craft was deeply rooted in his soul and never left him. Ten years before his retirement, he took up the craft seriously, and in 2013, he founded a workshop specializing in Manchu paper cutting. Having risen from a county-level craftsman to a provincial-level practitioner, he has definitively committed his life to this art.
The soul of his craft lies in Manchu traditions and the spirit of the times. Manchu paper cutting originated four hundred years ago from shamanic beliefs. Originally intended for blessings, the "momozhen" figurines embodied the rough and majestic spirit of a people born in the saddle and stood apart from the fine craftsmanship of the southern schools. Guan Changsheng deeply understands: without culture, a people has no soul. While preserving tradition, he boldly innovates, moving away from outdated themes, creating works on everyday themes such as "The Longevity of the Crane and the Pine" or "One Hundred Good Wishes." He is the only master in the country who creates paper cuttings with Manchu script. For many years he worked on the 500-meter scroll "The Complete Image of the Great Qing Dynasty," carving out more than 600 scenes from the history and everyday life of the Manchu dynasty, turning his art into a "living chronicle" of national culture.
Behind this lifelong devotion to tradition lies a loneliness unknown to others and harsh realities. What worries him most is the generation gap: older masters are passing away, and young people are reluctant to pick up scissors, making craftsmanship endangered. The market problem is also acute: machine production and cuttings generated by neural networks are displacing manual labor. Work that takes three to four days cannot compete in price with cheap mass production, and for large pieces, it is even harder to find an admirer. Guan Changsheng admits that without economic profit, it is difficult to ensure continuity. But even under these circumstances, he never puts down his scissors.
As the years pass, he decided to entrust his memory and hope to the future. For three years now, Guan Changsheng has been teaching voluntarily at an elementary school in the Manchu village of Yongling, instilling in children a love of crafts. His son and grandson have taken up scissors, continuing the family tradition. During vacations, students from Beijing, Shanghai, and Sichuan come to him to learn paper cutting and listen to his stories, thereby helping Manchu culture expand its reach. The state is increasingly focusing on intangible cultural heritage, and his giant scroll will soon be presented digitally, allowing as many people as possible to see this ancient art. Deep down, he has a humble desire: to take his craft one step further, to elevate it from a provincial level to a national one, and to ensure that Manchu paper cutting truly lives and thrives.
Scissors, red paper—when cutting out patterns, he remains true to his roots. For nearly a century, Guan Changsheng has preserved the living memory of the Manchu art of paper cutting. In the land of Xinbin, this elderly man still bends over his work, and each line he carves seems to say: as long as there are those who remain faithful to tradition, the thread of national culture will never be broken.
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