the interaction between mother and child. Yu Rong explains how she looked back to when she was reading to her son when he was young.
“The mother and her child open the beginning of the book and closes it at the end, while Ming’s story is hidden in the middle of the book. It felt very personal telling the story in this way. Jake and I spoke a lot before beginning the book and we incorporated some of my childhood memories into the story. Basically, I am the mother and the child is my little Julius, who loves pandas and has all sorts of panda toys in his room.
“I love the idea that through a mother and child’s perspective we get to see Ming’s story It allowed me to combine my background and current family life in UK with the historic story. In some ways, Ming’s story echoes my own story, there is a strong connection between us.” Yu Rong has been creating art for over 20 years, rooted in traditional Chinese techniques and building her own style of visual storytelling. Her work is most deeply associated with traditional Chinese paper cutting, known as Jianzhi. It has a long history in China and cultural impact that stretches back many hundreds of years, possibly dating back to the invention of paper in the Han Dinasty, in the year CE 105. The involves cutting negative space into the material, creating an image or pattern – it was first practiced on thin materials such as gold or silver leaf, silk and even leaves. But as the price of paper fell and It became more widely available, it soon became embedded in the realm of folk art.
The technique was often passed down
Yu Rong and Jake Hope with Ming the Panda.
from mother to daughter and became increasingly important during festivals for items such as lanterns, and remains culturally important today. In fact its importance was recognised when it was added the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.
For Yu Rong, there is real cultural value in this ancient art form and she as embraced it in her own way. She reveals that the artwork can have a life of its
own, revealing that it can still surprise her. She says: “Mostly I use traditional paper-cut with pencil drawing to finalise the details. When I started to use paper cut to illustrate, it was very tricky and passive, it can easily lead to a struggle and frustration. Practice really does help to deliver the best results, through endless experiments, I have gradually discovered that paper-cut can be playful and by trying new approaches I can sometimes exceed expectations.
Spring-Summer 2026
PEN&INC. 13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54
