Vital signs

A master carver brings his family craft to the sixth generation, investing his wooden creations with eyes and other facial features that move. Lin Qi reports.

The name of Xu Zhuchu means "newly grown bamboo", embracing a wish for extraordinary vitality that would keep the family thriving for generations.

Now 78, Xu, a State-level inheritor of the puppet-carving technique, is still creative and hard at work at his home and studio in Zhangzhou, Fujian province.