Craftsman Wang Tongsheng uses a most basic material - a bowl of melted malt sugar.

He grabs a small lump of the sticky, brown material, rolls it into a ball and hollows it with his thumb. He then closes the hollowed ball, rotates it with a rope-like long end being drawn from his mouth and blows into it with air. While the ball bulges like a balloon, he shapes it into a calabash. Holding with a bamboo stick, a vivid candy figurine is finished. The whole process takes no more than one minute and Wang does it at ease like a magician.

Wang, a Shandong-based artisan in his 40s, is one of the participants in the current China Peasant Art Exhibition at the National Agricultural Exhibition Center until July 8. Like him, more than 200 artisans produce on-the-spot performances.

Sponsored by the museum together with the China Folk Artists` Association and Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage, the exhibition is divided into three parts: folk handicrafts, peasant paintings and agricultural posters.

The handicrafts give visitors the chance to witness various kinds of rarely-seen local art products from all around China: a young Tibetan girl is concentrating on her tangka creation, a kind of silk embroidery with the theme of Buddhism, while Wu Deyin, a local Beijinger, explains the story behind his clay sculptures. Like our candy craftsman Wang Tongsheng, many other artisans are busy on creations with distinctive regional characteristics.

In front of them are leather silhouettes, batik fabrics, kites, flower-arrangements, bamboos, paper-cuts and straw knitting, as well as sculpture with such different materials as root, wood, stone, egg shell, clay, dough, fruit and plant.

"I`ve been blowing the candy figurines for more than 30 years and I am the fourth generation of my family to take the creation as a profession," says Wang. "I cherish the chance to be recommended to the show by the local artist`s association of Shandong."

16 Dongsanhuan Beilu, Chaoyang District

6509-6688

Wu Liping