Enormous wood carving showcases beauty of Great Wall

Wood-carving masters in Southwest China's Chongqing recently used a whole piece of Chinese ebony to showcase the beauty of the Great Wall of China. The wood work is 5.6 meters long and weighs about 1.4 tons.

Chinese ebony refers to hard wood which has long been buried in the earth and looks like both wood and stone because of carbonization over thousands of years.

It took Zhou Chengwen, 65, his son Zhou Kui, 32, and an apprentice over one year to finish the work, which won the golden prize at the Third Master Cup of Chinese arts and crafts this year.

"Chinese ebony carving requires much more complicated techniques than normal wood carving," Zhou Kui said. "Especially in the drying and polishing process. Very few people in China have done such a large piece before."

The Zhou family plans to keep the valuable work in a future wood carving museum in Banan district, Chongqing if they cannot find the right buyer for it.

China has a long history of wood carving. The earliest existing wood carving unearthed in 1980 in Hubei province was believed to be made during the Warring States about 3,000 years ago.