When depicting human or animal eyes, they always draw a round eyeball right in the center of the eye white, without any sheltering by the eye lids. They believed that it made the eye look bright and full of life. The embroidered rats always have three colorful lines out of
the eyes known as "three stitches." It is a custom to liken the eye to the sun and the lines to sun rays.
When we were in the class in the Chinese Fine Art Institute, a graduate student created a large paper-cut in the theme of birth, arriage and death. At an art work open house, our guest grannies all disagreed to include death in it. One said, "Don't let him die. Keep him alive to serve the people." Another student copied a model of Granny Hu Feuglian's paper-cut "The Rooster," but left out the symbol "Sheng" or the "Clouds hook", as unnecessary. Granny Hu said, "You can leave out other parts, but not the 'sheng,' because that is the symbol of life, the heart and the soul of this art work." These words provided us some good "food" for thought.
