A panorama called Hezhe Scenes fills a wall in the visitor service centre at Sipai's Hezhen cultural park. A 2025 report describes a work 44 metres long and 4.4 metres high, assembled from 21,852 salmon skins. More than forty craft practitioners worked on it for over 200 days. The scale changes how fish skin is encountered: a material associated with clothing and small objects becomes the surface of a large collective image.
From the journal
Fish-skin painting on display in Sipai
A large fish-skin artwork at the Sipai visitor centre turns community history into an assembled visual narrative.
In the same city · Shuangyashan ↗Thousands of skins become one panorama
A year told through people and work
The picture contains 27 scenes and 78 figures. Dog sleds cross snow, paddles meet river water and fishers handle spears; another scene places an Imakan storyteller inside a shelter, telling a Morigen hero story. Seasons, work and narrative unfold across the same surface. Nearby, the heritage hall displays fish-skin clothing and masks decorated with clouds, plants, butterflies and geometric forms. These smaller objects bring attention back from the panorama to the cut piece and the patterned surface.