Molten iron fireworks shows add sparkle to town in Hebei

SHIJIAZHUANG - The Lantern Festival, which fell on Tuesday, two weeks after Lunar New Year, is the busiest time of the year for folk artist Wang De, but it is also the moment when he feels the most proud of his signature craft: creating molten iron fireworks.

Wang, who is a blacksmith by trade and an exponent of the 500-year-old art of Dashuhua, which literally means "creating tree flowers", lives in Yuxian county in the city of Zhangjiakou, North China's Hebei province.

To create molten iron fireworks, scrap iron is melted up to 1,600 C and thrown against a cold wall to create dazzling effects.