The 49-year-old Cui Xianren is a native of Huiqi Manchu Ethnic Town, Wangkui county, of northeast China's Heilongjiang province.

His hands and face were severely burnt when a diesel barrel exploded during an accident in October 1993, leaving him with movement in only his index and ring fingers.

Burdened with a family to feed, Cui was forced to beg on the streets. He would bend on a long sheet of plastic for several hours writing neat and beautiful Chinese characters with his injured fingers.

Cui practiced for about ten years to master the feat following the accident.

A microblogger posted a photo online of Cui begging and writing on the street of Qingdao city, in east China's Shandong province on October 9.

The photo quickly became an Internet sensation, prompting Founder Font, a company under the Peking University Founder Group which specializes in the development of Chinese Fonts, to post a notice on its official microblog to locate the author.

Staff from the company finally located Cui on a street in Qingdao on October 12. The two parties signed a working contract on Friday after Founder Font made clear the terms to Cui.

Founder will cover the expenditure for Cui's artistic creations and provide him with 50,000 yuan in advance for his livelihood. Cui was asked to first work on a list of 1,000 Chinese characters and send the finished works to the company, which will then incorporate them into its font library after making necessary adjustments.

Cui will exclusively enjoy any profit made from commercial development of the fonts within a 50-year time frame.

Founder Font said Cui's chalk calligraphy, with its classic beauty, will have huge potential for the designing and advertisement market.

Cui had related to the media that during his years practicing the art, he would choose traditional Chinese characters from a dictionary and transform different parts of the characters to make them look like a picture.

Cui, who has only three years of primary education, has become the first grass-roots calligrapher to sign with Founder, the company said, adding they would name the fonts after Cui's given name, Xianren.