One-legged man paints world classics with chalk for a living

On February 6, under the overpass at the crossing, a one-legged man spent more than 5 hours using a variety of chalk colors to draw a six square meter copy of the Mona Lisa. The superb technique attracted many passing pedestrians to stop and watch in amazement.

One-legged man paints world classics with chalk for a living

The reporter on scene saw that from time to time, people passing by stopped to put money in a cardboard box. The man nodded in thanks, then continued concentrating on his creation. The painter is understood to be named Cong Langui, and is 48 years old. He was born in the Linyi countryside, Shandong, and was diagnosed with bone cancer when he was 16 years old, and had to get his left leg amputated. From then on, he fell in love with painting and copied world-famous paintings at home every day. Leaving home to become a street artist at the age of 21, he has now traveled more than 20 provinces and cities nationwide. This was his second trip to Wuhan.

Cong Langui said, "Although living was hard, painting in the streets across the country for 20 years, always made me enough money for my life and travel. In fact, money was not the main reason behind it all. What I want to say is that we should face difficulties with courage, and face life with a smile." Today, Cong's greatest desire is to accomplish something in the painting area of study. He said that the pastel's degree of difficulty was relatively low and he now wants to learn oil painting, ink, watercolor and other techniques.

Later, the reporter searched online and found that Cong is currently a well known one-legged street artist on the Internet. On September 28 2009, Cong was funded by a netizen from Hubei University and illustrated 6 paintings at the Badaling Great Wall using the blackboard provided by the Great Wall Museum. His paintings included the "Founding Ceremony," "Two Missiles plus One Satellite," "Reform and Opening Up" and "Hong Kong and Macao's Reversion." All the paintings were saved in the museum collection by the Great Wall Museum.