re// oof indeed

I hope school goes okay also

oh YIKES

The Chinese character by the heron/crane's back (福) can be translated into "good luck/good fortune" and "happiness". It is a common Chinese tradition to decorate houses with red and gold (as both colors are distinct for their luck and both colors were used primarily for the monarchy in ancient times) decoarations, namely paper cuttings, during the Spring Festival (春节) aka the Chinese New Year. Often people in China will decorate their windows and doors with banners and paper cuttings of 福 for this (spring) holiday season. You may have noticed that I displayed the character upside down. This is because the Chinese word for "upside down" (捯) sounds exactly like the Chinese word for "arrival/to arrive" (到). (Both are pronounced and written as "dào" in Chinese Pinyin, which is why you type primarily English letters on the Chinese keyboard. On the keyboard, after you type in the Pinyin, it will recommend you character options to pick from. Otherwise the tens to hundreds of thousands of Chinese characters would be impossible to implement into any sort of typing.) Basically, it's a common Chinese pun meaning roughly "good luck/fortune arriving" or "happiness is arriving". This is why you may see this upside down character in Chinese decorations in the late winter (the approximate time of the Spring Festival/Chinese New Years.)

This school project was based around paper cutting, which is a big deal to me since I'm ethnically Chinese (not culturally, though; culturally I'm incredibly American). Paper cuttings in China are so elaborate that they're undoubtably considered an art form. Now I have no practice in paper cutting (because I'm American and I actually had to research all of this), but I knew it was a big deal to the country I was born in. So I though 'what the hèçk, I'll take these kitchen scissors that are twice as big as my hand and do something awesome'. Except it was really, really hard. This cutting is on an 8.5x11 (inches) piece of paper. Basically, it's standard sized. which means most of the detail in the feathers are an inch big (if even); which means that I had to spend hours maneuvering this big, clunk pair of scissors around this top heavy heron cutting for h o u r s (it was top heavy because I did not consider the fact that citing small holes in one half of the work would make that part of the work more delicate and lighter than, say, the neck). Basically, this thing looks great on paper, but man if it looked awful while I was still cutting it out! You can't tell, but I actually messed up several times in that tiny feather area by accidentally cutting through the borders of the feathers. Thankfully, glueing the thing on the background paper made the broken lines match up next to each other, so it's hard to tell that it's a little mutilated.

The heron/crane symbolizes longevity (and sometimes purity) in Chinese art. The pine tree likewise symbolizes longevity (long living/long life) in Chinese art. Its also worth noting that pine trees are really different in Chinese art. They're often bent around and crooked, like you would expect a tree hanging off the side of a cliff to look like - jagged. The tufts of pine needles were pretty easy as long as I cut them separately from the branches (which I did). Although this creates a whole new set of problems. Do this. Open your hands palms up. Look at your pointing finger. Look at the topmost segment of your pointing finger, near the tip. Take that distance from the bottom of that segment to the tip of the finger and decide it by half. That's how long (across) some of these pine tufts were. So O shouldn't have been surprised when, at 1:00 am, I dropped the pine tuft on the second branch down (the bottom one farthest to the left). It fell off the tip of my finger and landed in the scattered paper debris on the floor, and I thought 'you've GOT to be kidding me'. I couldn't find it for the life of me. So a few minutes later I gave up and made a new one that was about the same size (it had to fit on its branch, be relatively upright, and not overlap with anything. Again, the movement of my hand towards the glue knocked the thing on the floor. Again I searched, but to no avail. Basically, the pine tuft featured on that branch is version 3.0.

It's also worth noting that there are only three colors of cranes in Chinese art, and red it not one of them. I just wanted it to look like a traditional paper cutting (most of which are done on red paper). ^^;

*four (for colors in Chinese myth/accurate art: white, black, blue, and yellow)

*W *it's *divide *I *with anything).