(120425) -- HANGZHOU, April 25, 2012 (Xinhua) -- Photo taken on March 22, 2012 shows part of woodblock printing work Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains and a block in Shizhuzhai Print Art Corporation in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. Located in a business street filled with stores and showcases in downtown city, a woodblock printing workshop seems strange and incongruous. Nearly ten persons are concentrated on carving or printing in semi-darkness in a 300-square meters semi-basement, regardless of the noisy and rush outside window. Among those, a middle age man with Chinese style dress is carving a wood plate of Buddhist figures under lamp. He is Wei Lizhong, founder and president of Shizhuzhai Print Art Corporation. Sizhuzhai, literally means Ten Bamboo Hall, was created in late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) by Hu Zhengyan who is a great master of pictorial color woodblock printing in China. His virtuosity is still evinced at the present day by his two books, the 16-volume Writings and Pictures of the Ten Bamboo Hall and the 5-volume Collection of Decorated Letter Paper of the Ten Bamboo Hall, which are regarded as the oldest east-Asiatic specimens extant of polychrome woodblock prints. Later, the prosperity of Shizhuzhai has gone and its special woodblock techniques have almost lost. Until in the 20th century, the books of Shizhuzhai were published again, but it is Wei Lizhong who revived the timehonored brand. Wei Lizhong was born in 1968 in Shengzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. In 1990, he was enrolled in China Academy of Art, one of China's top art colleges, and began his art career. Although his major was drawing, once learned about woodblock printing at a lesson, he was infatuated with it and decided to spend his life on it. In 2001, Wei Lizhong funded Shizhuzhai Print Art Corporation with all his savings, despite his whole family's opposition. In most people's eyes, woodblock printing cost much and gained less, but he has insisted in his
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