CHINA — AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSION | Seeing China [Temple Hill Cut-outs]. [Chefoo, China: Self-Help Dept., Women's Bible School, Presbyterian Mission, ca. 1930]

CHINA — AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSION

Seeing China [Temple Hill Cut-outs]. [Chefoo, China: Self-Help Dept., Women's Bible School, Presbyterian Mission, ca. 1930]

Oblong folio (13 1/4 x 10 in.). 24pp, eleven hand-cut chapter headings and approximately 90 hand-cut and mounted black cut-out illustrations, many with colorful silk inlays. Contemporary stitched pictorial silk covered flexible boards, with publisher's 1-page letterpress explanation leaf mounted on inside front pastedown. 

Scarce hand-made album of elaborate cutouts by Chinese women at the Ai Dao Bible School in Chefoo

The introductory letterpress leaf explains: "The cut-outs of Temple Hill are an adaptation of figures of animals, plants, insects, dragons, etc. cut out by the women of Shantung for unknown generations." It would appear that several versions of these books were produced. The present one, which is unrecorded by OCLC, is titled Seeing China, and is divided into sections, including Travel and Transportation, Customs and Habits, Occupations, The Eight Immortals, Curios and Curiosities, Myths and Legends, Chow & How (including a leaf of letterpress with seven recipes), Chinese Children, Chinese Junks and The Magician. Although undated, the work includes a Chinese Birth-Year Cycle chart that encompasses the dates as early as 1864 up until 1935.