
(Image: Hakka TV)
Chiu said that in the old days during Lunar New Year celebrations, weddings or funerals, Hakka women would cut various prayers and blessings on paper. The papercut designs often rhyme with the words conveying people’s wishes. For example, cuttings of bats “bian fu (蝙蝠)” represent wishes for happiness “fu qi (福氣),” antlers “lu jiao (鹿角)” represents “guan lu (官祿)” or official salary, fish “yu (魚)” represents “nian nian you yu (年年有餘)” or having a surplus year after year. The ashitaba plant or longevity peaches represent long life, the treasure bowl and yuanbao (元寶) symbolizes asking for wealth, the human figure represents wishes for a child or marriage between men and women, two hearts represent double happiness, and when a son is born, ixora flower patterns are cut. Just as spring couplets use written words to express wishes during the Lunar New Year, Hakka paper cuttings use totems to show people's prayers and expectations.

(Image: Hakka TV)
Nearly 20 years ago, Chiu learned this traditional technique from Hsu Yong-fa (徐永發), a national treasure of Hakka paper-cutting. Chiu said the reason she was fascinated by Hakka paper cutting was because she was deeply attracted by the meticulous imagination of Hakka people, who transformed their wishes into images. Paper cuttings do not have words, but the rich images combined together to create what looks like a poetic prose, Chiu said.
Chiu once heard her paper-cutting master say that when the Hakka ancestors came to Taiwan, they brought with them their admiration and reverence for the heaven and earth. Faced with the hardship of life, when they saw Han people selling Spring Festival couplets, they followed the same pattern and tried to imitate them with red paper. However, most of the ancestors were illiterate at that time, so they turned their wishes into picture designs and cut them on paper.
The prototypes of the five blessing symbols (五福符): fu (福)—happiness, lu (祿)—career success, shou (壽)—longevity, xi (喜)—joy, and the bagua (八卦) or Chinese Eight Diagrams may be just a few gaps on a piece of red paper originally. But after many generations, the totem has gradually developed. In response to various occasions, colors and patterns that represent different connotations are used. For example, red paper is used for the New Year and black and white for funerals, and five colors are used for worship ceremonies - red and orange to represent thanks and prayers, yellow for ancestor worship, and blue and green associated with heaven and earth.
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In the past, the skills of cutting the five blessing symbols were only passed on to people with status, and the symbols used for rituals could only be cut by the doyens or prestigious men. Therefore, Chiu Yu-yun may be the only female who can cut these symbols at present. In order to prevent the loss of the Hakka paper cutting craft, Chiu has carefully recorded the styles, cutting methods, and cultural meanings of various totems in her notebook, and has spent a lot of efforts to organize the Hakka paper cutting art.
Chiu Yu-yun sees a deeper cultural heritage behind the paper cuttings. The patterns and metaphors on the paper are the codes full of blessings, and they string together the meaning of the Hakka people's rituals and beliefs.
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