A ball flower paper-cut "Baby with coiled hair" is very popular among the folks on the loess plateau along the Yellow River basin. In the center of the ball is this baby with coiled hair, who is patron saint and god of propagation on loess plateau Wearing a hair style with double coils upward to the sky, and holding a pair of fish in both arms, she assumes a squatting posture as if giving birth. The lower part of her body is a pair of scissors pointing downward to imply the nature of male or yang, which, corresponding with her hair coils implies that she is hermaphroditic god of the universe. Scissors is yang by nature, a sharp tool that keeps away evil spirits and disasters. As a folk proverb goes: "Awl and scissors drive away the five poisonous creatures." Some folk art works make the eyes of god as the sun. The two breasts are the two eyes of a cicada, a legendary animal of propagation, to symbolize a continued and never ending posterity. On each side are symbols of "Sheng' (A music instrument, hegemony of "birth" in Chinese), or lotus flowers. "Sheng" is "birth" and lotus is a proliferous symbol with male nature. A local folk proverb goes: "When lotus and sweet osmanthus growing out of a bucket, we have sons, daughters and nephews; when golden cicada blowing 'Sheng,' family posterity never ends." "A ripe persimmon bears eight precious 'Sheng (kids),' and a lotus plants the seeds." In this art work, god of the universe holds yin and yang two fish, one in each hand, with their tails connecting in a continuous letter "Wan" without breaking up, implying a never ending prosperity and ontinued posterity. In the lower part of the picture are two geometry symbols of Ruyi (good luck), and a legendary rabbit holding grass
in the mouth. Rabbit, hegemony of "spit kids", is god of proliferation. Two rabbits with double Ruyi have the meaning of giving birth to precious sons one after another. A wedding song used by the people of the loess plateau has "double walnuts and double iuiubes, double sons and daughters chasing around. A good son is expected to grow up wearing cap and blue gown (t
o become an official);
and a daughter is to be capable with her hands." With the art of paper-cut, "every cut has a meaning of its own" said the grandmother who made this art work of mulh- lateral, collective symbols and cultural codes with the theme of life and propagation. If a paper-cut for window decoration could be a tourist book of northern Shaanxi, "Baby with coiled hair" would be an orchestra of the paper-cut art. It is actually a transformed version of "Double fish with human faces" on 600-year-old painted pottery from the Yangshao culture of Xi'an.
Paper-cut "paired fish dolls" from the loess plateau of Gansu Province has two yin yang fish one on each side. It shares the same cultural implication and art form as "Yin yang fish," and "Baby with coiled hair." In Luochuan, Shaanxi Province, it is in the form of a paired snake with coiled hair, and paired dragon with coiled hair. In Chinese folk art, fish, snake (dragon) and baby girl are related and interchangeable.
