Meet the 'playboy' guardian of heritage

AT 86, WANG SHIXIANG, perhaps the mainland's last playboy, has lost nothing of his taste for a gentleman's small pleasures. 'I am still wasting my time on useless things,' he confessed cheerfully pulling out his latest work , a treatise on the old Beijing art of making pigeon whistles.

The pigeons have almost vanished from the Chinese capital - 'you can't keep them in high rise blocks' - but Mr Wang always relished the hushed fluting sounds they can produce.

'It is the divine music played in heaven that exhilarates the mind and delights the spirit,' he writes in the preface of his book.

The book is not going to make him rich, but nor have any of his other works. Over the last 10 years he has written about the world of pigeon fancying, badger hunting, cricket fighting or hunting rabbits with falcons.

'All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy - I like this saying very much,' he said, recalling in still flawless English his days at the Peking American School. 'I was a sort of playboy at school too. In high school, we were supposed to write a composition a week. For four weeks in a row, all my compositions were concerned with pigeons. Our teacher was so exasperated: 'If you write another composition on pigeons,' he scolded, 'I'll give you a P [poor] no matter how well you write'.'

Yet his research has helped preserve many forgotten arts from a vanishing world - how to make gourds, carve bamboo, play ancient Chinese music, paint lacquerware and build traditional wooden furniture.