Tillicum Middle School 6th-grader Ezra Tores put down his scissors and held up a red paper dragon he had cut out.

“My guy breathes fire,” he said to other students at his table.

Chinese artist Yao Bingyue, who recently came from China to introduce traditional Chinese paper cutting to American schools, says that the folk art form allows students to tap in to their creativity. It is very subjective, she explained, and artists can create shapes according to how they imagine certain things to be.

“Chinese paper cutting teaches students how to concentrate on certain things and it develops their creativity and mental skills,” Bingyue added. “It’s really helpful to their future studies.”

In Beijing, students by the age of three have to do their own cutting and think about what kind of image they want to create.

A nationally known paper cutting artist, Bingyue works in a preschool/kindergarten attached to Beijing University. She has also worked with the Early Education Research Institute of Beijing and has done studies on fine art education for children.

Han Yao, Bingyue’s nephew, who also came to the Tillicum demonstration, said his aunt recently began a project to establish sister school relationships between Chinese and American schools to enhance art education. On May 27, she made her first visit to Bellevue, where she taught students about the folk art and spoke with teachers about developing relationships.

Her tour began at Medina Elementary School, where she visited kindergarten classes. She also went to Tillicum and spoke with Chinese language and art students, and ended at the Bellevue Arts Museum with another paper cutting demonstration.

At Tillicum that afternoon, she held up a paper cutting of an animal with a horn and stripes cut across the figure’s stomach.

“One of the characteristics of Chinese paper cutting is it combines different animals into one,” Bingyue explained of the mixed tiger and unicorn shape. Tillicum Chinese language teacher Hong Jiang translated Bingyue’s Chinese.

In China, the tiger is the all-powerful, based on an ancient legend, Bingyue told students. Many Chinese hang tiger paper cuttings on the wall or in their window to “stop evil spirits” from getting into their homes.

There are differences in the way Americans and Chinese do paper cutting, she said. Chinese are concerned with intricate details, while American paper cutting focuses on main shapes.

Many Chinese artists begin by cutting the outside shape first. Using a pencil, she outlined a circle. Then holding the scissors still, she turned the piece of paper around the scissors and cut out the circle.

She poked the scissors through the paper and made two arched eyes, which added an angry expression to her figure. She also made intricate flower patterns on the cheeks using a series of dots, the simplest shape in paper cutting, she said.

Delaney Cerna, an 8th-grade art student at Tillicum, said it’s interesting to see a different art form.

“I mean, we learn a lot about drawing and painting, but not so much cutting,” Cerna said.

Seventh-grader Amelia Liu, a Chinese language student, said it was interesting to see a different side of Chinese culture, “instead of just learning how to speak the language in class.”

Bingyue said she hopes her visit to Bellevue and future visits to other American schools will help her to understand the differences and commonalities between art education.

“I want to share that so together we might do something very meaningful,” she added.

Carrie Wood can be reached at cwood@reporternewspapers.com or 425-453-4290.