AN exhibition currently being held in Hangzhou is showcasing works by some remarkable artists - they are all disabled in some way. Xu Wenwen meets some of them and learns how physical impairments have not stopped them from being creative and giving back to society.

Lou Kaimin stares at the entrance of the art gallery, expecting more visitors to his solo exhibition. He sits in a chair and rubs his left leg which has wasted away because of infantile paralysis. The crippled artist has been exhausted lately by running the exhibition, however, the income is not going into Lou's pocket but will fund a local disabled federation.

It's not the first time the artist of Chinese calligraphy and paintings has donated his works. Previously, Lou donated five works to Sichuan Province after a devastating earthquake hit the area in 2008.

"Society has given me much and I need to give something back," Lou explains his passion for charity.

The exhibition running through to Wednesday is being held at the Cultural Center of the Disabled Federation of Shangcheng District (365 Zhongshan Rd S.) - the very organization that will receive the proceeds from sales.

The cultural center that opened last August features a room that exclusively exhibits and sells artworks made by local disabled artists, including Chinese traditional paintings and calligraphy, seals and some paper folding works.

"The center is not to show how many great achievements handicapped artists have made, but to tell people how they integrate into society," says Wu Bushun, manager of the center.

The works displayed in the center are by no means as splendid as masterpieces, but they are certainly not inferior to able-bodied people's works.

For example, the stone seals are carved by Kong Lixiang, a 39-year-old seal cutter who lost both arms in boyhood due to accidental contact with a high-voltage electricity line.

Kong cuts stone seals using his feet which are as adept as ordinary people's hands. In fact, he does lots of things using his feet, such as writing, eating and brushing his teeth, but to cut Chinese characters on small stones using his feet is undoubtedly the most demanding.

"Pain and cramp occurred often," Kong says.

But he endured due to his enthusiasm, and later on studied Chinese traditional painting and calligraphy, as all proficient Chinese seal cutters must do. Now Kong is a professional seal cutter who runs a seal store at a square to the west of Hefang Street, a quaint commercial street in Hangzhou.

In the past few years, Kong has been awarded many times, both for his seals and paintings, yet not once has he entered a competition as a "handicapped artist," "because I want to know my real level," he explains.

"I face the fact that I am disabled, but I never emphasize the fact to others," says Kong. "What I need is respect, respect from others' hearts, not compassion or sympathy."

This thinking, stout while peaceful, actually took the artist a long time to cultivate. For many years, the man without arms was annoyed by "people's unusual looks" and didn't conquer his fear and inferiority until he eventually established a thriving business.

"Gradually I came round since I found I work as well as healthy people do," Kong says. "Even disabled people boast two advantages in learning: we are better on concentrating and we are patient of hardships," he says.

Chen Weiqiang, whose artworks are also displayed at the center, agrees.

The artist who also lost his arms due to an electric shock from a high-voltage electricity line is definitely patient of hardships - he can draw Chinese paintings and write calligraphy using his feet, mouth and armpits.

"In my boyhood when practicing drawing by mouth, I bit and operated brushes. Many times my teeth unintentionally crushed the brush head, hurting my mouth and more often than not, new wounds soon formed before old ones got healed," he recalls.

Even today Chen still breaks brushes' heads when drawing.

But no pain, no gain. Today Chen is so well-known that during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 he was invited to give a solo exhibition at one of the Beijing Olympic pavilions, and has been invited to demonstrate painting and calligraphy at the World Expo Shanghai 2010. He also owns an advertising company and an art gallery.

"It doesn't mean that you lose everything when you lose a sound body. Confidence and expectation win the most beautiful future," Chen says.

Wang Yuanpeng thinks so too, and says "since I couldn't die, I had to live, and live very well!"

The artist who writes calligraphy suffers complete paralysis of the body from the neck down after being struck by spondylitis (inflammation of the joints of the backbone) when he was 14. He writes by clasping pens and brushes with two stiff hands and wrists.

To hold a pen between the hands sounds easy, but it took Wang two years to practice, because at the beginning he couldn't sit straight and his hands were too feeble to handle a slim pen.

"During that time, my mother had to pick up the pen for me all the time," recalls Wang.

"Pain drove me to think, and I was determined to live similarly as healthy people do," he adds.

The young guy, who went to school for only four years, not only taught himself calligraphy (both brush and pen), but also studied school courses by himself until he finished college education.

He loves literature and has a habit of copying out books or writing comments on books.

In 1991, Wang spent 18 months copying out his favorite book "How the Steel Was Tempered" in Chinese traditional calligraphy, which embraces more than 320,000 characters.

The book is an epic semi-autobiographical novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky, a socialist realist writer. Wang's artwork is now held by a museum in Russia.

From 1993, he started to copy out the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Currently he has finished three of them, and each of them occupies around one million characters.

When Wang finished his artwork of "Journey to the West" that extends 300 meters, someone bid 120,000 yuan (US$18,510) to buy it. He refused but donated it to Zhejiang Museum.

"Since I am now a capable man, it's time for me to contribute my power to society," says Wang.

According to the population census in 2006, China has 83 million disabled people, accounting for more than 6 percent of the whole country's population.