Money on display at art show

Artist Liang Kegang has created an art piece made up of 10,000 100-yuan banknotes. The one million yuan (about 90,000 euros) used to make the collage have been borrowed from the artist's friends, who will get their money back if no one buys it.

The collage named "One Million" is on display at the "Message from Qingdao" art show in Beijing, which highlights works by artists from Qingdao, Shandong Province.

Liang says that ordinary people normally never get the chance to see one million yuan, so he wanted to convert this abstract concept into reality, Xinhua writes.

The art piece has been on sale for six days with a minimum bid price set at 1.2 million yuan (about 107,000 euros), but has attracted no buyers.

Liang insists that the banknotes are genuine, although he will not allow them to be examined, saying that would be an insult to his work.

According to financial experts, using real banknotes to create art is subject to approval from the People's Bank of China. A vice director of the Finance and Bond Research Institute at the Renmin University of China told Xinhua that using money to make pictures is also in violation of China's regulation on banknotes.