Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency:  Newsflash

A Chinese teacher has spent four years creating a series of 14th-century book characters using walnuts.

Fei Junlong, 55, from the city of Xianyang in the Chinese province of Shaanxi has been fond of arts and crafts since he was a child.

In his spare time, the physics teacher has spent over four years carving ‘Water Margin’ characters out of walnuts.

‘Water Margin’ is a 14th-century Chinese novel attributed to Shi Nai’an that is considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

The novel is written in vernacular Chinese rather than Classical Chinese.

The story is about a group of 108 outlaws who gather at Mount Liang to form an army before they are eventually granted amnesty by the government and sent on campaigns to battle foreign invaders.

After creating a large number of the outlaw characters from walnuts, Fei admits that it is now difficult to part with any of them.

He said: “Every walnut is different which makes each piece unique. I am very reluctant to sell them.”

In the past, the teacher has also used walnuts to carve characters from other stories such as ‘The Eight Great Monsters of Shaanxi’, ‘Huayin Laoqiang’, and ‘The Eight Views of Guanzhong’.

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