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Xu Huichun, 45, a former clerk in charge of cultural affairs in northeast China, has made a successful career out of paper-cutting, by which Chinese characters, beasts and birds, fishes and insects are formed.

Xu has created more than 50,000 Chinese characters and hundreds of pictures by cutting paper since he developed a passion for the art in 1992.

Xu now runs a painting and calligraphy store, named Yishi Shuhuayuan in Jinzhou city of northeast China's Liaoning Province.

The first work Xu completed was Pipaxing, a poem written by famous Chinese poet Bai Juyi in the Tang Dynasty (618-917 AD).

To do this, Xu first put a piece of white paper on the table, then dyed it with Chinese ink. When the paper dried, Xu began to cut it, in the same manner as writing, and eventually a Chinese character was formed.

One by one, Xu finished all 752 Chinese characters in the poem after four months' hard work. Finally, Xu stuck the cut characters on a 20-meter-long paper.

In 1997, Xu created four 100-square-meter characters, Zhufuxianggang, to give a good wish to Hong Kong's return to homeland. The four characters used up more than 400 pieces of paper.

Of all his work, what Xu is most proud of is a 100-meter-long picture, which tells China's 5,000 years of history.

Covering the Shang Dynasty (16th century-11st century BC) to now, the picture contains seal cuttings, frescos, kites, types of facial makeup in Beijing Operas and the 12 animals associated with the yearly cycle often used to denote the year of a person's birth.