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Quyang, a county in Hebei province neighboring Beijing, is trying to make its history of
carving more widely known.

The county, home to 530,000 people, issued a new picture album recently in Beijing to show its connection with some world-famous architecture and sculpture in China.

The picture album, namely "A Close Look at Quyang," is being used as the county's "name card."

The Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens (Yuanmingyuan), and the Dunhuang Grottoes are not unfamiliar, even to many foreigners. But few Chinese know that craftsmen from Quyang County took part in the designing, building and carving work.

With a carving history of more than 2,000 years, Quyang was known as the "hometown of carving" during the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.- 24 A.D.). Some works of the county's carving artists are now considered national treasures.

Modern masterpieces by the county's craftsmen include a sitting statue of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong placed in the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, and the embossment on the Monument to the People's Heroes located on Tian'anmen Square.

Liu Baoling, head of the county, hoped that the picture album could help people from other places and countries learn about the county and attract more professionals, tourists, and investors to the county.

Quyang boasts a reserve of 400 million cubic meters of marble. Its artists today carve not only traditional Chinese lion statues and stone Buddhas but also Venus from western culture.