Have you ever seen ivory in a rice grain size having over 100 characters engraved on it? And have you ever seen an ivory 8 cm long and 5 cm wide with a portrait on it made up of over 4,000 characters?

Bashu has numerous unusual talents, among which some are maverick. Liu Shengdao from Yongchuan District, Chongqing, studied at school for only one year but has become a master in versification, calligraphy, painting, and seal carving. His family has been in the area for generations.

Ancestor Liu Shengfu came to Chengdu during the mass migration of peasants from Huguang to Sichuan Province in the Qing Dynasty. The man lived by carving seals and selling and mounting pseudo-classic calligraphy and painting works in the city, under the name of Yilu (lit. a shack of art) during the reign of Emperor Qianlong. Later generations inherited the name Yilu and were famous for microscopic carving and pseudo-classic calligraphy and painting.

In 2007, Yilu microscopic carving was recognized as one of the first batches of Chongqing Intangible Cultural Heritage projects. It has 13 generations of successors, and Liu Shengdao is the 11th.

Microscopic carving requires exquisite skills. One rice grain carries an article, a picture, and even a micro-world of literature.

Back in the 1940s, when he was only 20 years old, Liu Shengdao engraved Sun Yat-sen's will (over 100 characters) on ivory in size of a rice grain, stunning Chongqing, then auxiliary capital, and hailed as "amazing carving."

Liu Shengdao created Barrage of Shizitan Hydropower Station Ivory Carving, which comprises more than 15,000 characters and is collected in the China Three Gorges Museum of Chongqing.

On April 27, 1956, People's Daily published Liu Shengdao's microscopic carving work on the front page. It is a portrait of Kliment Voroshilov, former Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, made up of his 4,000-word speech engraved on 8-centimeter-long 5-centimeter-wide ivory. Premier Zhou Enlai gave it a national gift to Voroshilov, which is still collected in a Moscow museum.

Liu Shengdao also engraved head portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong on ivories in size of a rice grain and Long Live Chairman Mao. Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China on hairs. All of them are in museums in different places.