Ku Shulan was born in to a poor peasant family in a small Chinese village called Wang in Xunyi County, Shaanxi province.
At the age of 9, her feet were bound by her mother and after leaving school at 15, she began to learn embroidery and jianzhi papercutting as part of her training for marriage. She was married at the age of 17 to a husband who regularly abused her throughout their life together, and gave birth to 13 children, 10 of whom died of starvation or disease before they reached adulthood. In spite of the extraordinary privations and hardships she endured, Ku Shulan, who never learned to read and write, persisted with her papercutting throughout her adult life and in , her extraordinary talent in jianzhi was discovered by Shanxi Province Cultural Center , after which she was invited to teach and direct papercutting in her province.
Soon after, her reputation rose immensely, and Ku was bestowed many domestic awards. Ku Shulan died in aged 84, but her popularity and reputation continue to grow. In , a sculpture of coloured papercutting art — Jiangwa la ma Meixiang qi Jiangwa leads the horse while Meixiang rides stood at the newly built Xunyi County Central Cultural Square.
This sculpture showcased the great artistic charm of the regional Xunyi style of papercutting. The handcrafted piece originated from a native rural woman, Ku Shulan, who was born and raised in Xunyi County.
Over her long career of creating papercutting arts, Ku Shulan mastered the collage technique, which combined different layers of colourful papers. This created a unique artistic style of folk papercutting. Ku Shulan is the best representative of the colour papercutting art of Xunyi County, the hometown of papercutting art.
