Carving out the revival of a lost art

Zhang Kuo is now known as "the last master of Beijing's woodcut New Year prints". Photo Provided To China Daily

Subjects varied from place to place, but Beijing natives preferred pictures of gods, heroes, ancestors, folk tales and Peking operas.

Zhang's family lived in a hutong alley near the Forbidden City. He learned carpentry, including woodcutting, from a neighbor at a young age, before being employed as a truck driver on road construction projects.

In 2007, he traveled to Shaanxi and Henan provinces, where he found local woodcut print artists still thriving. Zhang was inspired, and determined to return to the craft.

He bought wood and spent months in libraries and antique shops, seeking traditional prints, books, and carving knives. He rented a small house as his studio in a hutong in downtown Beijing.

Woodcut printing has four steps. He usually sketches a picture on a piece of paper before carving it on a set of boards. He paints the boards in different colors. Lastly, he presses a piece of paper to the board to print the picture. In bygone days, the steps were sometimes done by different craftsmen, but Zhang does them all himself.

For a decade, he has spent hours each day carving, often forgetting to eat.