University of Michigan's community outreach coordinator, Carol Stephanchuck, didn't know what she found when she went through random boxes from storage.

15 poster-sized, propaganda materials from 4 decades ago resurfaced at the University's storeroom-a find so rare that even in China, this kind of thing would still be a big deal. The images are done in a paper cut technique where the images are cut from red paper; the same way that traditional Chinese holiday decorations are made.

Stephanchuck said that while going through them, she thought that the frames were in terrible shape but otherwise, the pictures were still in remarkable form. She brought them to her office to be looked at by her colleagues and got the shock of her life when she was told what they actually were.

Faculty members were in awe of just how a rare art piece was among in the university's possessions. It turns out that Michael Okensberg, a late scholar who taught in the university for 2 decades, acquired the material when he was doing some research in Hong Kong in the 1970's.

Oksenberg later donated them to the school once he left for the East-West center in Honolulu in 1991, as remembered by Ena Schlorff, the program's coordinator. "We were storing them for future consideration. It took the newer faculty ... to realize the current importance of this collection," Schlorff, who had served as Okensberg's secretary, says.

Most excited about the find is Wang Zheng, an associate history professor. Zheng illuminates the most probable time as to when the pieces were produced. She said that most probably it was done by younger atists in a small folk art institute in Guangdong and was improbably commissioned by the government at the time.

"They did not have embedded interests in the establishment, and the Cultural Revolution was to smash the establishment. The young ones who didn't have power ... likely identified with it," Zheng clarifies. Zheng plans to incorporate the newly found pieces in a book that she is writing.

China Michigan