Xiamen’s Zhongshan Road is packed full of fashionable clothes stores, expensive jewellery shops, and high-end tea merchants. Shoppers who aren’t blinded by the bright neon lights or deafened by the pop music blasting from shop-front speakers may have the good fortune to stumble across a small, inconspicuous stall, manned by a remarkable man named Li Fangliang.

　　Li’s stall is a veritable feast of colourful and eye-catching objects. There are Pokemon figures, Hello Kitty cats, roses, parrots, and pigs, alongside Confucius and famous characters from Journey to the West and other classic stories. Sky blues clash with blood reds, bright yellows outshine the coolness of dark greens.

　　Perhaps the fact that Li sells these objects is unremarkable in itself. After all, plastic Hello Kitty key rings are attached to the rucksack of every discerning high school student. However, when one considers that these particular figures are made entirely of flour, they suddenly become rather more special. Li has broken the mould, so to speak, or is at least refusing to use one.

　　“I keep my ear to the ground,” he explains. “Whatever’s fashionable at a particular moment in time, I sculpt.” Thus Li’s newest additions to his already impressive repertoire include the Beijing 2008 Olympic mascots and little pigs. With Chinese New Year 2007 marking the beginning the Year of the Pig, Li is expecting his herd of the animal to sell well.

　　His flour sculptures represent the collision of old and new, combining an ancient art with modern images. When one looks at Hello Kitty cats standing next to sculptures of Confucius and other sages, it is like looking at modern Chinese society - with its ongoing tension between past and future - in microcosm.

　　The art of flour sculpture has an impressively long history, spanning over three hundred years. It began in Heze county, Shandong, which is where Li hails from. “My family has been making flour sculptures for four or five generations,” he says, “and I have taught my son the art in turn.” But he does not guard a family monopoly: “Kids can come here and learn how to make the sculptures too, if they want,” he says, obviously happy at the thought of transferring his skills to a new generation.

　　Originally, flour sculptures in Shandong were used in funeral rites and other ceremonies where respects would be paid to the deceased. The art then developed into a more commercial enterprise when its practitioners began to tour the country, setting up stalls in various cities. Li has continued in this travelling tradition, and he and his flour sculptures have achieved the incredible feat of spending time in every Chinese province bar Tibet and Xinjiang.

　　The sculptures are made of a mixture of flour, oil, and honey, in order to keep the objects from breaking up. This combination means that far from being fragile, the items harden once they have been steamed and can be kept for years without damage. Armed with his coloured flour, a few carving instruments, a comb, a pair of scissors, and a packet of cigarettes, Li works his magic without any apparent effort. His hands are capable of turning a boring lump of flour into a beautiful rose in only a couple of minutes.