Replica of China's Mona Lisa made of 6,000 tin cans

TAIYUAN - An aluminum carving made from more than 6,000 tin cans and entitled Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival was unveiled in North China's Shanxi province on Monday.

The artwork is a replica of the original Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, which was created by Zhang Zeduan during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) and is often dubbed "China's Mona Lisa".

The replica is the work of Gao Bao'an, a resident of Linfen city, who took three years to finish the 28.8-meter-long, 1.3-meter-tall carving, which is almost five times the size of the original.

The carving on tin cans, each of which only measures 21 centimeters in length when unfolded, was no easy task.

"A single can was not enough to carve one character and a finished figure needed to go through as many as 26 procedures, including copying, clipping, polishing and pressing," Gao said. "Every step mattered. Some patterns were so complicated that it not only took me a long time, but I often cut my fingers."

To make sure his carving was a perfect replica of the original, Gao used magnifiers to observe the finer details.

Though not professionally trained, Gao has always been an art lover. He has tried to paint with grain and is interested in manual tie-dyeing.

"It is easy to discard a can, but they can also be used as a resource," Gao said.

Zhang's original artwork is kept in the Palace Museum in Beijing and can only be seen once every three years to protect the fragile ancient paper. Using a more hardy material such as aluminum offers an opportunity for more people to enjoy a replica of the ancient artwork.