A combination picture shows Chinese artist Li Hongbo playing a paper sculpture of gun on outskirts of...
A combination picture shows Chinese artist Li Hongbo playing with a paper sculpture of gun, made of 300 pieces of paper, at his studio on the outskirts of Beijing, January 20, 2014. Born into a simple farming family, Li said he had always loved paper, invented in ancient China. Beyond his sculptures, he has spent six years producing a collection of books recording more than 1,000 years of Buddhist art on paper. Neither plaster nor clay, the statues are concertinas of thousands upon thousands of fine pieces of paper."At the beginning, I discovered the flexible nature of paper through Chinese paper toys and paper lanterns," Li, 38, told Reuters. "Later, I used this principle to make a gun," he said, casually inverting a crude paper pistol into an elegant fan. "A gun is solid, used for killing, but I turned it into a tool for play or decoration. In this way, it lost both the form of a gun and the culture inherent to a gun. It became a game." Picture taken on January 20, 2014. REUTERS/Jason Lee (CHINA - Tags: SOCIETY)