Wang Guisheng is crazy about rocks. His eyes shine whenever he introduces his collection to guests. As an expert in stone appreciation, Wang's yard is filled with precious stones. Be it Chinese painting stone or white marble, he can always quickly identify their characteristics.

Born into a poor peasants' family in Shanghai's neighboring Jiangsu Province in 1936, Wang didn't have much to play with growing up. Therefore, he turned to the most common thing he had access to: rocks. He lived beside a river shoal and a bridge, where he was often able to find something that he liked. He kept up the hobby even after he went to college.

Wang studied mathematics at Nanjing University in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu. In his spare time, he would go to the Rain Flower Terrace, one of the city's scenic spots in that’s home to a slew of historical monuments as well as beautiful marbles. It became a hunting ground for rock enthusiasts like Wang.

After graduation, he moved to Jiading and worked at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics.

His enthusiasm for stone appreciation deepened as he grew older. "You can never 'find' good stones; they find you," Wang says. "They've survived thousands of years of history and were witnesses to a lot of things we modern people didn’t get to experience. I see science, art and philosophy in them. "

Wang retired in 1996. His wife died a year after, and the pain of that loss almost knocked him down. "It was the stone collecting that saved me," he says. Although he got offers from some factories to work as a consultant, he turned them down. He needed something more therapeutic.

Travel around the world

That was when he really started focusing on his passion and delved into the world of stones. Since then, he spent eight years traveling across China and another five exploring 45 other countries, devoting all his free time to the art of stone appreciation and researching its cultural history.

He has been to Europe, America, Africa and other countries in Asia to visit ancient gardens and temples as well as natural scenic spots. He sets aside 10,000 yuan fund (US$1,520) every year from his pension just for traveling.

"I have stayed in motels that cost 3 yuan per night. You can imagine the conditions. If I couldn't find a motel, I would stay at a local resident's home. I will do anything it takes to find the stone I love," he says

Once, when Wang was in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, he spotted a stone that looked like the ones used to build Gothic cathedrals. He was more than pleasantly surprised and bought the stone for 800 yuan. Afterward he tried to buy a railway ticket back home, but didn’t have enough money left for a sleeping berth because of the purchase. "So I sat for several hours and ate instant noodles, but I felt like the happiest guy on the planet," Wang says.

"I used to have various health problems — my waist and back hurt, high blood pressure," recalls Wang, "but ever since I started traveling for my hobby, all those problems are in the past."

He wrote tons of notes on his discoveries and collections and took numerous pictures for reference. During the nearly two decades of his research, Wang has published more than 250 articles and essays on stone appreciation and penned several books. "I think it is harder to 'read' a stone than read a book, because there are no words on them," Wang says.

Apart from his own work, Wang also helps Chinese ancient gardens restore historical stones that got lost in the passage of time. Many of Jiading’s historical stones have been discovered through his research and fieldwork.

A book called "Records of Qiuxia Garden" says that there once was a lakeside rock in the garden with the characters mi zhi nang on it in Li script — a style of calligraphy in the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).

This rock was special in that there was water oozing out of its surface on rainy days, and the water had a beige color that looked like rice milk, hence the name mi zhi nang, which means "rice milk sack." However, the rock went missing several decades ago and nobody knew for certain if it was still in the garden.

Wang took it upon himself to try to locate the rock.

A friend of his provided a clue — there might be pictures of that rock in the book "Jiading's Paintings, Calligraphy, Historical Sites and Landscape" which was published in 1939. "I went to Jiading Museum to borrow the book and found the pictures," Wang said.

He and management staff at Qiuxia Garden searched for rocks that bore a resemblance to the one in the pictures. They eventually found one extremely similar. They cleaned the dust and dirt off, and saw the characters mi zhi nang on the surface. The rock has been on public display ever since.

Stone appreciation has inspired Wang to look into other interests as well.

When he was on a trip to Sichuan, Shaanxi and Beijing in 2010, Wang found out by chance that some ancient stones have oracle bone inscriptions on them. Therefore, he started studying oracle bone inscription dictionaries.

"Without a teacher, I could hardly understand any of the characters." But he didn't give up that easily.

He began copying the characters in the books and comparing them to modern Chinese one by one. "I can now recognize more than 500 of these characters," he says.

This is the sixth year since he first began research on oracle bone inscriptions.

To commemorate his achievements, Jiading Library held an exhibition of Wang’s calligraphy of oracle bone inscriptions on January 11, displaying almost 100 works.

"This is like my 'elementary school graduation' in this area," Wang says.

"I used to work in a scientific research institute, but now I know a thing or two about a new field that I wasn't familiar with just a few years ago It encourages me to keep learning."