Knives are usually associated with chopping up food in a kitchen, but in the hands of Li Yifa, a traditional paper-carving expert, a knife becomes a paintbrush that creates lifelike images on paper.

Li, who is from the city of Ji'an, in Northeast China's Jilin province, transforms plain paper into realistic people, animals and scenery.

Paper carving is a special technique developed from traditional Chinese paper cutting. The art form has enjoyed an increasingly good reputation in art circles and works have become more popular, with more people collecting them.

However, the reputation has been hard to earn and Li, who is director of the Ji'an Paper Cutting Association, contributed a lot.

After years of diligent practice, many of Li's works are now highly spoken of by artists at home and abroad.

He uses paper carving techniques to imitate well-known ancient Chinese calligraphy and painting works.

His name was included in China's Paper Cutting Celebrities list in December 2006 and he won the silver medal at China's first Paper Cutting Festival in Beijing in 2010.

During Li's 40 years of experience, he has not only improved his paper carving technique, but also developed it into five steps and formed his own teaching method to help more people who want to learn the skill.

When Li carves paper, he said it is as though the knife understands his heart and follows his every order. He said many people think it's an easy skill, however, when they start basic cuttings they quickly find it needs years of practice.

Li was born into a paper cutting family and his first teacher was his grandmother, who comes from a coastal region in Shandong province where traditional paper cutting is popular.

When his grandmother Shan Xiulan moved to Ji'an, many people worked as loggers in the forests. Rafts were used to transport timber and they often crashed during bad weather, with many people killed.

As an act of good will and blessing, every March Shan would cut safety and blessing messages onto paper for the loggers. One year, the number of loggers had increased so much that Shan could not produce enough paper cuttings for them all.

To save time she got a knife and cut through several layers of paper. To her surprise, the works were much better than those she made with scissors and were more efficient so a new paper carving skill was born.

In 1973, 10-year-old Li began learning paper carving from his grandmother and mother and has never given up.

Because of his contribution to the art form, the technique was named after him as Yifa Paper Cutting Technique. The art form has been included as an intangible cultural heritage of Jilin province.

As well as creating new works, Li also devotes himself to promoting the art and teaching more people the skill.

He has been invited to other countries, including Japan and the Republic of Korea, for exhibitions and seminars and his works are collected by institutes at home and abroad.

liumingtai@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/25/2015 page10)