Jia Fengke's brightly colored gourd artworks inspired by Peking Opera costumes. [Photo/VCG]

Jia Fengke fell in love with gourd carving 20 years ago. The 53-year-old folk artist from Zhengzhou quit his job and concentrated on gourd art creation. From painting on gourd, to bas-relief, high relief, hollowed-out carving, and colored drawing, Jia is constantly refining his gourd art technique.

He has created more than 200 gourd artworks on diferent themes of birds, flowers, figures, animals, mountains, rivers and calligraphy. As he is still relatively unknown, sales are low and he sometimes considers giving up, but his passion for gourd art always wins out.