Paper-cutting, one of the most popular and oldest folk arts in China, has always been a popular source of festival decorations to convey people’s wishes for good luck and happiness.

To celebrate the upcoming Year of the Ox, Yuan Manjun, a paper-cutting master based in Shenzhen, has created a series of ox-pattern paper-cuttings.

Yuan is a representative inheritor of the Yuan family’s paper-cutting, an intangible cultural heritage of Futian District. She is known for “yin yang jian,” a paper-cutting skill that carves a piece of paper into two different motifs, one hollowed and the other a solid cutout.

The art of paper-cutting has a history of over 1,500 years in China. But people had used other thin materials, like metal foil, cloth, leather, and leaves to carve hollowed patterns 3,000 years ago.