Yanchuan Survey | The Great Survey of Paper-cutting in Yanchuan County

June 30, 2004

Long March team members Xiao Xiong and David Tung arrived in Yanchuan and were greeted by Deputy Head of Yanchuan county Yan Chuanzhu, Head of Cultural Bureau Yang Yan’an, amd Director of the Yellow River Ecology and Culture Preservation Committee Feng Shanyun. The same afternoon, they visited the office of the survey committee to inspect the completed results from 4 villages.

July 1, 2004

The Long March team went with survey unit No.4 to Hui Juyuan village in Yan Chasi township to conduct the survey. They stayed in the village for the night, where the female members of the research unit performed the northern Shaanxi folksong, The East is Red.

July 2, 2004

At 6 o’clock in the morning, the research unit arrived in Ma Jiaqian village to conduct the survey. It was during the busy farm season, and the unit must take advantage of the time between 6 and 8 in the morning, between 12 and 2 at noon, and from 7 to 9 at night for the survey.

In the afternoon, Head of the county, Mr.Feng, visited the Long March team and inspected the survey work. That night, he held a get-together with the Long March team in Peizhi village.

July 3, 2004

The Long March team went to Xiaocheng Folk Art Village in Tugang township and Yellow River Folk Custom Museum in Nianpan village for fieldwork. In Xiaocheng village, other than an administrative head elected through popular vote, there was a “village art leader” elected also through popular vote—Cheng Wen. The Yellow River Folk Custom Museum was a museum run entirely by local village men on a model of collective ownership. It was built and managed by the local peasants.

July 5, 2004

The Long March team followed survey team No.3 to Fanjiachuan village in Jiajiaping township to continue the survey. One of the survey subjects was an 84-year-old woman with bound feet whose last name was Zhang (she had no first name and went by her husband’s surname). The village was known as the “Village of Daoqing Drama,” and there were several amateur theater groups run by the local peasants.

July 6, 2004

The Long March team followed survey team No.2 to Tianjiayuan village and Shangdamu village in Yanggetai township to continue the survey. Only 32 households lived in Tianjiayuan village, and 28 of the local residents were women. Li Cuifang, a paper-cutting master living in Shangdamu village, was the party representative of the village.

July 8, 2004

The Long March team interviewed the leader of survey unit No.3 and Party Secretary of the County Cultural Bureau, Liu Shengdong, and the unit member Feng Ruimei. They shared their thoughts on the survey and the problems they encountered during its implementation.

July 9, 2004

The survey station convened a meeting among the five leaders of the research groups. Xiao Xiong delivered a presentation as the representative of Long March and reinstated the purpose of the survey. The leaders had a heated discussion about presented difficulties and possible solutions.

July 11, 2004

The Long March team followed research unit No.5 to Yangjiawan village located on the outskirts of the Yanchuan county town. Ma Cuilan, a 22-year-old, confessed she was grateful that she moved to this village after marriage. Because of her husband’s private problems, they hadn’t had a child after 6 years of marriage. To her, papercutting bore her hope to have a lively family.

July 13, 2004

The Long March team arrived in Gecao, a remote village on the outskirts of Majiahe township, for an exclusive interview with the 80-year-old Gao Guilian. The old lady’s eldest daughter-in-law suffered from mentally illness, and one of her younger granddaughters was mute, so her other granddaughter who was only 12-year-old had to take on all the housework, and the family faced serious financial burdens. The secretary of the county’s party committee who traveled with the team to the village decided to donate 200 RMB to them. The secretary said it was enough to cover the living expenses for the household for a whole year. The team returned to town in the evening and ate instant noodles together while it rained. After dinner, they had a meeting with the township secretary Zhang Xiangrong to discuss coordinating strategies, which lasted till 3am.

July 16, 2004

Lu Jie, Jin Zhilin and the photographer Wang Hongjin arrived in Yanchuan and met with the survey committee.

July 17, 2004

The survey committee convened in the conference hall located on the 3^rd floor of the County Government Center for a meeting to share their experiences of conducting the survey.

July 19, 2004

Jin Zhilin and Lu Jie travelled to Gaojiayuan village in Wenanyi township to conduct the survey. The township leader was named Li Gao. The village consisted of 14 households, with a population just over 40; more than 20 of them were women, and 14 of them were trained in paper-cutting. Once part of the Chinese Soviet Republic, the village was historically more affluent than other parts of the region; it did not even suffer famine during seasons plagued by natural disasters.

July 20, 2004

Donggetai village in Yuju township had 80 households, and 20 percent of the population had migrated elsewhere for work. A majority of the households shared the surname Zhang, and the rest were Lis, Lius, and Fengs. The wife of the village leader, Feng Xinlian, was a paper-cutting master; interestingly, she took most of her inspirations from TV series. Whenever she saw a scene she liked on TV she would remember the imagery and would later turn the imagery into a papercut work.

July 21, 2004

Xiao Xiong, Wang Hongjin, and Yue Lupin visited Gao Fenglian’s house to film an interview.

July 22, 2004

The Long March team reviewed the survey documents at the survey station. That night, the Yellow River Ecology and Culture Preservation Association hosted a dinner for the Long March team.

July 29, 2004

The Long March team arrived in Hedong district in Yanchuan township to visit Hao shuzhen, a 66-year retired teacher and a paper-cutting master. Born in a red family, her grandfather was an underground party member during the Chinese Civil war and was killed by the Kuomintang in Qingjian county. Her husband volunteered to join the army in 1950. In the afternoon, they visited Suya village in Yanshuiguan township to see a dance performance by the local yangge dance group. Here they met Liu Sannv, a local villager who knew how to cut the classic pattern of the “suffering person.”

July 30 – 31, 2004

The team stayed in the survey office to review the survey documents.

August 1, 2004

The team visited Gao Fenglian’’s home, where they re-ordered her large-scale papercutting work, The Grant Archway, photographed it, and mailed it to Beijing. That night, the team helped rescue someone at Dayu Mountain Region, and the whole procedure was filmed by Xiao Xiong.

August 2, 2004

The Deputy Chief of the County Police Bureau visited the team with reporters from the county TV station and asked for a copy of the video documentation of last night’s rescue. The Deputy Chief insisted on taking the Long March team out to lunch, but the team kindly refused.

August 3 – 5, 2004

Review

August 6, 2004

Xiao Xiong had another intense argument with Feng Shanyun about the survey.

August 7 – 25, 2004

The team compiled and reviewed all the survey documents. David returned to Beijing, whilst Xiao Xiong stayed to continue working on the project.

August 28, 2004

At 11:53pm, all the survey documents was returned safely to the 25,000 Cultural Transmission Center. Lu Jie led the entire Long March team to welcome the delivery team upon their arrival.