Long Yizhen, 11, wearing a traditional Miao dress with a flower embroidery pattern, sits besides a small wooden desk and works on a paper-cut .

The sunshine is radiant and minutes later, drops of sweat run down her forehead. However, Long does not seem to take notice. Her earnest expression makes visitors hesitant to disturb her.

It is a luxury to own a colour pencil for the children living in the remote deep mountains in the Xiangxi Tujia/Miao Autonomous Prefecture in the west of Central China's Hunan Province .

However, the children of the Miao ethnic group in the La'ershan Hope Primary School in Fenghuang County are getting the chance to enjoy an entirely new sort of fine art class.

Mud, straw, bark, stones and bits of cloth have been turned into imaginative works by their nimble, little hands.

The children have decorated the playground of their old, shabby school building, turning it into a garden of art with their instinctive creations.

Here, the folk fine art of the Xiangxi, or Western Hunan region has been expressed by the hands of children with their special perspective.

Straw dragon flies fly around the big trees, on whose branches baby dolls made from colourful cloth are attached.

Below the trees are all sorts of utensils made of straw, such as brooms, baskets and bowls.

The visitors are most fascinated by the different stories being told by the straw figures.

Folk fairy tales and traditional holiday celebration are also the favourites of the young artists.

Traditionally, paper-cuts made by Miao women are used for embroidery patterns. But nowadays, the handicraft is in danger of extinction.

Fortunately, Long cherishes the art - it is her favourite subject.

"The teacher does not have any particular requirement for us at all," she says.

"I just cut whatever patterns I like, though sometimes he will give us a helping hand when we have difficulties."

Long uses pencils to draw a Miao girl holding straws on a piece of paper, which she claims will bring a significant harvest.

She wants to make her picture more beautiful, so a butterfly is added next to the girl.

The paper-cut patterns created by Long and her classmates clearly reflect the Xiangxi Miao embroidery tradition, which features flowers and grasses.

When looking at his students enjoying their fine art class, Long Junjia, a village teacher, recalls that two years ago, it was a great headache for him to follow textbooks to teach the class.

The students could not pay for water-colour paintbrushes, which the text required. Thus, interest in the fine art class dwindled quickly.

Last July, the school became one of seven in Xiangxi to be covered by the "Dandelion Action" programme, part of a three-year project for after-school fine art education.

Launched by the Commission for Children's Art under the Chinese Artists' Association, the project aims at merging folk art essence and the most creative fine art education, while protecting and rescuing intangible cultural heritage.

  Rich tradition

Xiangxi is an ancient and still very mysterious place. Ancestors of the Miao and Tujia ethnic groups settled in the region thousands of years ago.

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