Nobody ever imagined that after being lost for more than half a century, the intangible cultural heritage known as Gaolou Mixian would be restored and passed on by a young man. “As a descendant of people from Gaolou village, I have a responsibility to restore our ancestors’ art forms,” Chen Guorui, the world’s only inheritor (继承人) of this ancient art, told the Global Times.

Gaolou Mixian uses rice paste to glue together selected grains of transparent rice to create realistic figures or structures. It is a unique folk art that developed during the Qing Dynasty and reached its peak during the first half of the 20th century. Each household in Gaolou village would make rice structures that they put on display in their ancestral halls during the Chinese New Year, which attracted people from all sides.

However, due to the wet weather in southern China, these rice-made artworks would only last three to four months before losing their shape. It is for this reason that these works are not seen in museums in China. Due to various historical reasons, most people in Gaolou village did not pass down the art form, which caused it to disappear nearly 70 years ago.

Chen found out about this after hearing one former resident express disappointment about its loss. Curious, he started to do research and tried out the methods he heard about from older people in the village. After several months of exploration, Chen finally completed his first successful work.

Over the past five years, Chen has gradually improved his skills and even begun using new techniques, such as creating some colorful artworks with colored grains of rice. Since 2017, people at home and abroad have taken an interest in this long-lost art form. To avoid being the last inheritor, Chen has been giving classes to some students at a primary school in Fuzhou with the support of local education authorities.

Today, we talk about a common object that appears in many expressions—buttons! Buttons, which are usually small and round and made of metal or plastic, are found on all sorts of clothing. They fasten or connect one piece of clothing to another in order to make sure your clothes don’t fall off.

To be cute as a button is an old saying, which means to be attractive or sweet, but in a small way. Babies are often described as cute as a button. Language experts don’t know why. But they do say this expression dates back to the late 1860s.

Here is another expression related to button: button-down. People often wear button-down shirts to the office. Button-down as an adjective means to be conservative or traditional. People described as button-down stay as close as possible to the normal way of dressing and behaving.

When buttoning a button you slip it into a buttonhole. A buttonhole traps the button. So, to buttonhole someone means you have trapped them in a spoken conversation. Now, let’s say you find yourself buttonholed in a conversation at a party. Someone just keeps talking and talking and talking! Finally, you can’t take it any longer. You tell the person to button it! This is a direct, but unacceptable way of saying, “Stop talking!” Button your lip is another equally rude but effective way to stop a person who talks too much.

Another kind of difficult person is someone who pushes one’s buttons. To push one’s buttons means to know exactly how to get that person angry or upset. People who like to push other people’s buttons usually do it for selfish reasons. They find a person’s weak point and then they use it to upset them.

Few women would consider a pair of scissors to be daily essential that they need to have in their purses. But for Shi Qinling, who is currently working at the Fenglin community cultural center in Shanghai, this tool has been with her everywhere she goes for the past decade —not as a means of self-protection but artistic expression.

“Paper-cutting is not about cutting random patterns from paper. Writers tell stories using words. I do the same, but with a pair of scissors,”Shi said.

Shi developed an interest in craft (工艺) when she was a child. This interest later developed into a passion, one that she decided to pursue by majoring in arts and crafts design during her time in university. After graduation, however, she found herself working at a ship design company as she was unsure about what she wanted to do with her future. About a year later, the Shanghai Arts and Crafts Research Institute offered her a position in their paper-cutting department. Realizing that she still had a love for the craft, she made the career switch.

In 2010, Shi started learning paper-cutting from Xi Xiaoqin, a paper-cutting expert. Three years later, one of her works, The Fighting Fish, won third place at the

Baihua Cup, a competition for Chinese arts and crafts. Over the past decade, Shi’s works have been exhibited in 23 exhibitions.

Although Shi is already so skilled in the craft that she can create an animal pattern in 10 minutes without even having to draw the outlines, she continues to improve her skills every day. The reason is that she views paper-cutting as not just an art form, but also a form of learning about traditional Chinese culture. She thinks she has the responsibility to attract people from different age groups and different fields to try paper-cutting.