Lishui Paper-cutting

The list entry

The second annex to the district's third-batch list, "District-level intangible cultural heritage list, twenty-two items in all", carries the entry "Lishui Paper-cutting", in the category of traditional fine art.

The third annex of the same batch, "List of representative bearers, nineteen persons in all", records Li Xuejiao for Lishui paper-cutting, and separately records Li Ganbin and Li Hongyan, and Wu Zhiping, for paper-cutting. The two wordings, "Lishui paper-cutting" and "paper-cutting", differ; both are reproduced as they stand and are not combined.

Submission and safeguarding

According to the reply of the district Culture and Tourism Bureau dated 28 November 2023, five items were submitted for the provincial list of representative items of intangible cultural heritage, among them Honglan Yudai Cake Making, the Zhang Family Throat Clinic and Lishui Paper-cutting. That reply is the wording of a submission; the level is confirmed here from the document published by the province.

The extension list of the fifth batch of provincial representative items of intangible cultural heritage, "VI. Traditional Fine Arts", published under Su Zheng Fa [2023] No. 100 of 3 November 2023 by the Jiangsu Provincial People's Government, carries the entry "Paper-cutting (Lishui Paper-cutting)", number JS-VI-5, serial number 61, with Lishui District, Nanjing, as the applying area or unit, listed as an extension sub-item under the same number as "Paper-cutting (Changzhou Paper-cutting)" of Tianning District, Changzhou, and the like. The provincial level of Lishui paper-cutting is therefore verifiable, and the level is recorded as provincial.

According to the public notice of district-level intangible cultural heritage items and bearers of the fourth batch, issued on 23 January 2024, the bearer Yuan Weini is recorded for "Lishui Paper-cutting". The notice is a draft for public comment, open from 24 January to 6 February 2024, and the formal list issued after the comment period has not been found in this round of research.

Uncertainties

First, the year of publication of the district's third-batch list has been filled in as 2017 from the document number (Li Zheng Fa [2017] No. 197), the four entries of that batch being dealt with together in the audit of 29 September 2026; the batch in the front matter of this entry records the provincial fifth-batch extension project, so it is unaffected.

Second, the provincial extension list gives only the project name, number and applying area or unit; it gives no introduction, bearers or guardian unit, so the guardian unit is still to be verified. Whether the bearers recorded at district level, such as Li Xuejiao and Yuan Weini, are at the same time representative bearers of this provincial item has to be settled by the provincial published documents, which this library does not hold, and no assumption is made here.

Third, whether the two wordings "Lishui paper-cutting" and "paper-cutting" in the third annex refer to one and the same item has not been verified in the original annex; the full name given in the provincial extension list is "Paper-cutting (Lishui Paper-cutting)", which differs in wording from the district entry. Each is reproduced as it stands, and none is combined or rewritten.

Fourth, Yuan Weini is a bearer listed in the district's fourth-batch draft notice, so the wording of a public notice applies and the formal list follows the published documents.

Fifth, an extension project shares the number of its main project: JS-VI-5 is the number of the "Paper-cutting" series, and the provincial document does not set out separately the relation between the serial number of this extension item and that of the main project, so no inference is drawn here.

Sixth, the motifs, patterns and techniques of the paper-cutting have no source in this library and remain to be added.