Carving bamboo is not as easy as it looks, says Wu Yunliang. To emphasize his point, he stretches out his hands, which are riddled with deep scars.

"The surface of bamboo is smooth and hard, so when carving bamboo, artisans are prone to scratch their hands if they don't look out," he says.

The artist from Anji,  Zhejiang province, has been sitting and carving bamboo all day, every day, for his entire adult life.

Afflicted with polio as a child, at 17 Wu decided to learn this traditional local craft and make a living from it.

For more than three years, he had to walk over two kilometers up mountain roads to his carving teacher's home, and then repeat the carving techniques, such as grounding raw bamboo roots, thousands of times a day, seven days a week.

"It takes more than 20 steps, from high-temperature sterilization, moth proofing, ultraviolet ray baking, drafting, grinding to painting, for a raw bamboo material of 3 to 5 years old to become a perfect bamboo artwork," explains Wu.

Though the work is not easy, Wu considers bamboo carving a source of joy and fulfillment.

His latest project is a set of exquisite carvings featuring different scenes from ancient Chinese stories and legends. Completing the project is particularly important to Wu because few people nowadays are willing to learn the ancient craft to which he has dedicated his life.

"I plan to set up my own workshop, creating more artworks and passing on my skills," he says.