Doctors in north-western China performed the world's second face transplant, claiming the procedure was "more complex" than the first such operation in France last year.
A surgical team at the Xijing hospital in Xi'an replaced two- thirds of the face of 30-year-old Li Guoxing, who was disfigured after a bear mauled him two years ago, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The head of the surgery team explained that they gave the patient a new cheek, upper lip, nose and eyebrow from a single male donor, in an operation that lasted 14 hours and was completed early Friday.
Li was "recovering satisfactorily" but would need six months to recover fully.
Surgeons in France carried out the world's first such operation on 38-year-old Isabelle Dinoire whose lips and nose were ripped off by a dog.