Now THIS is a wood carving

The world's longest, in fact. And it's … well, brilliant.

Chinese artist Zheng Chunhui decided he wanted to make a wood carving to impress – so he took an entire tree.

Yes, seriously. And once he had his tree, he spent four years carving, in painstaking detail, a recreation of the famous ancient Chinese paining "Along the River During the Qingming Festival."

Because if you're going to do something this crazy, you should go all the way. Which Chunhui did, and the results are incredible, featuring 550 individually-carved figures.

The sculpture is 12.286m – that's 40 feet – long, netting Chunhui the world record for the world's longest wood carving. The fact that it's an amazing work of art is an added bonus.

The record was confirmed at last week's Guinness World Record day.

Luckily, the state-owned Chinese News Service was on-hand to capture images of the incredible finished piece, some of which you can see here:

Not too bad at all.