Baomo Garden

This guide to Baomo Garden in Guangzhou follows He Shiliang, a boy from nearby Shawan who picked up his first chisel at sixteen and trained under a master carver whose furniture once furnished Beijing's Great Hall of the People. It traces his move to Guangzhou and the years he spent learning to carve brick the way others read faces, then follows the making of the wall of birds and blossoms rising in front of you, worked one grey brick at a time. Look closely at how deeply each feather is undercut before you move on.