(ECNS) -- A 72-year-old craftsman stole the limelight with his elaborate "Luban stools" at the third Ulanqab Food Culture Festival in Inner Mongolia on Saturday.
Jing Hong can make more than 10 different shapes of the stool. He said that this craft was handed down from his ancestors. It usually takes him 2 days to finish a simple design and nearly a week for a complicated one.
The complicated processes of making a Luban stool involve sawing, smoothing, grinding, drilling, chiseling, and digging. The whole object has no nails or other metal components holding it together.
A Luban stool can be opened and closed easily, and the parts will not be completely separated, forming strange furniture with "static" in "motion", "dynamic" in "static".
Legend has it that Chinese craftsman Lu Ban (770-476 BC) invented the stool 2,600 years ago.
