More than 180 years ago, in the town of Odense, Denmark, a little boy imagined that a Chinese princess lived in a beautiful castle under the river passing through the town. He was eager to find a way to the mysterious castle, and sing for the princess.

Decades later, the boy, named Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75), became a world-famous master of fairy tales, even though he never had a chance to visit China.

Instead, many Chinese have had opportunities to visit the Hans Christian Andersen Museum.

Among them, Lu Xue, a Chinese folk artist from East China's Shandong Province, has distinguished herself by bringing her 112 exquisite paper-cuts to the museum.

With her scissors she has shaped episodes from five of Andersen's stories, "The Little Mermaid," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Wild Swans," "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Match Girl."

Visitors to the museum can now appreciate the memory of Hans Christian Andersen in paper.

Grassroots teachers

Born in Manzhuang County in the city of Tai'an, Shandong, 33-year-old Lu started to learn paper-cutting when she was a little girl.

"I learned from my mother," she said.

Lu's mother Bu Xiufang, a rural housewife, has a special talent for the art. She also loves fairy tales. "She cut out all kinds of characters while telling me the stories," Lu said.

Lu's mother is also adept in embroidery, creating various designs including peonies and animals on shoes and handkerchiefs. Embroidery patterns became the little girl's favorites. Tracing them and cutting them out, she gradually learned the basic skills.

"My mother asked me to visualize entering a gorgeous garden, then find the blossom I liked best to look at closely and next, cut the most charming flower.

"She believed that if you put your heart and soul into the work, glamorous blossoms will bloom in the depth of your soul as you cut out paper flowers. And you can even smell the fragrance."

At the age of 7, Lu produced her first work, of reed catkins. "I was rewarded with a big hug and kisses from my mother," she said.

For Lu, the small front courtyard of her family was another inspiration for her creation.

"My mother raised ducks and chickens. She planted various vegetables and flowers, all in good order," Lu said.

She remembers that she always took a pair of scissors around, so she could cut whatever things that inspired her.

To love the world is Lu's life philosophy.

"My mother always reminds me that even if you lead a dissatisfying life, you should still love the world. It is this attitude that gives you power and makes a better future," Lu said.

"Not only has my mother taught me paper-cutting, she has also helped me realize what I want."

Yet the key people to Lu Xue's artistic progression are a peasant couple in remote Puxian County in North China's Shanxi Province, some 1,000 kilometers to the west of her hometown.

After graduating from high school, she worked as a baby sitter for her cousin. She continued practicing her art at night.

One day Lu became fascinated by two traditional paper-cuts in a newspaper. She quit her job and headed for Puxian, where the paper-cuts had come from. All she had was her mother's support and 20 yuan (US$2.4). It took her four days to get there.

"The place was a heaven of paper-cutting," Lu said. Local people decorated their houses, cave dwellings with complicated red works.

Lu found the elderly couple featured in the newspaper. "I even did not know their names," Lu said. She called them granny and grandpa.

In the daytime, Lu helped out with the farmwork. At night, she practiced her craft, trying to master the unrestrained, passionate and straightforward local style.

She learned to cut out eyes, which her local teachers recognized as "the key to vivid characters."

"Layer upon layer, granny cut out patterns, directly expressing the theme of creations," Lu said. "She also emphasized to leave enough space for imagination."

Lu spent two months with the old couple. In the next three years, Lu visited many other artists across the country.

Her works could not avoid the various northern and southern influences.

During her first tour in Singapore in 1997, then president Ong Teng Cheong applauded her work "A longeval god on the back of a crane."

Ong told her: "You must have gone through a baptism of your soul before creating these incredibly beautiful things."

"Ong was my true bosom friend," said Lu.

"Art is beauty, and the core of beauty lies in love," she said.

In Lu's world, a tiny stone or a falling leaf can make lively a scissor-cut. Her works become a language that crosses any geographical or ideological barriers.

Lu describes European-style paper-cuts as "romantic" and "creations under the moon." She has noticed that Western paper-cuts are actually images of original materials, and mainly portray their outlines.

She calls the Chinese ones "creations under the sun."

"All Chinese paper-cuts have detailed portraits of facial features, lines of trees, even the slight creases in clothes," she said.

Specific information conveys best wishes for a happy New Year, long life and harmonious family life.

When Lu took her craftwork abroad, she found many visitors were puzzled by her traditional characters.

She had to repeatedly explain who they were and what lucky meanings were implied -- and then came up with the idea of using characters traditionally known throughout the world.

Hence Andersen's fairy tales in paper. They were followed by creations of "Snow White" of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's "La Luna," the British soprano Sarah Brightman, and the Danish royal family.

But Lu has not totally abandoned Chinese flavor when making more worldly cuttings.

In her piece depicting "The Wild Swans," Princess Eliza is portrayed bathing in a pool of lotus flowers, a Chinese idiom that implies chastity.

Lu has also added her own interpretation, and her works have been criticized at home. The critics say her craft is neither one thing nor the other.

"What I have done is not a total betrayal of traditional folk art. I just want Chinese paper-cuts to be known and loved by more people around the world, not merely some relic miles from ordinary people's lives," she said.

Lu Pintian, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Arts shares the same view.

He suggests folk artists should adapt modern elements and art forms of different cultures into their creations, to meet the changes of life styles and values.

This is the only way traditional arts can be properly preserved and maintain charm and vigor, in the vast context of globalization and as competition heats up.

Lu is still perfecting her style, a combination of "the three-dimensional effect of oil paintings and the comeliness of traditional Chinese paintings," she said.

She is confident that folk artists who disagree with her now will approve of her craft with modern and Western colors.

Lu is now busy researching the fountainhead of paper-cuts, after setting up the Hong Kong-based Chinese Arts Paper-cutting Association with Morgan K F Lam, a legislator in the HKSAR in 2002.

Her current focus now, alongside her artistic production, is on an exhibition of fairy tales in Chinese paper-cuts.

Convened by the Chinese Arts Paper-cutting Association and the China International Exhibition Agency, the exhibition is to be put on across the country next year, as a part of worldwide celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen.

Lovers of paper-cutting and fairy tales are all welcome to send their works to organizers until January.

"I hope everyone will enjoy and rediscover themselves in creating paper-cuts," said Lu.

(China Daily November 11, 2004)