A traditional Chinese papercraft is to make these toys, flowers and dragons and whatnot out of honeycomb latticed layers of delicate colored paper. Pull them apart and the form appears.​

Li Hongbo, a Beijing book editor and designer, has worked almost in reverse. The flattened shape IS the form, often an entirely believable facsimile of an object that suddenly and inexplicably folds and extends. It is quite uncanny, especially when human forms are the ones the open and unfold.