60% of the World's Art is Made Here: Dafen Village Business Model

This is probably China's most controversial village, Daofeng, a place that mass-produced the world's most famous paintings. At its peak, over 60% of the world's oil paintings came from this one village with 8,000 painters. In 2016, a documentary called China's Wangos brought it to the world's attention and asked a question nobody could agree on. Is this art or just a factory? I came here with no script, no filter, just a camera and a lot of questions. What does Daofeng village actually look like today? And what happened to the people who built their lives here? Let's find out. It is a regular workday afternoon. I drove almost an hour from Shenzhen city center to get here. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary village you would pass through in southern China. Old buildings, narrow lands, nothing that screams art. But the second you walk in, it's a completely different story. Like every single shop is about painting. Galleries, a framing, art supplies, training schools, everything just art. Even after all the research I've done before coming, walking in for the first time still caught me off guard. The first thing that actually stopped me though wasn't a painting. It was a local auntie pushing a cart through the lanes, selling bowls of douhua, traditional Cantonese tofu pudding. Super refreshing, slightly sweet, exactly what you want on a hot day like this. Apparently, as Daofeng got more touristy, some locals started selling street food to make a living on the side. Anyway, after that I started actually walking around. And pretty quickly I noticed, there are painters just walking on the street, writing on pavement with brush out, canvas up against the wall. A lot of them doing Van Gogh style stuff. So I just walk up, ask about the work, ask about the prices. This is apparently pretty common here. Painters come outside to work because it draws people in, start a conversation, maybe get a sale. And this is a thing that genuinely surprised me. If you just walk past without looking at what they were doing, you will never guess they were artists. They look like anyone you'll see in any village in Guangdong. But hand them a brush and they'll recreate a masterpiece. So how did all this start? Back in 1989, Shenzhen was still basically a construction site. And a Hong Kong businessman named Huang Jiang saw an opportunity. Low labor costs, cheap rent here in Shenzhen, and a growing demand from buyers in Europe and the US who want art for their walls. Not for original art, just something that looked good on wall with affordable price. So he brought a small group of painters here and started producing reproductions. Word spread, more painters came. And within a few years, an entire supply chain had emerged. Painting, framing, packaging, shipping. Most of the early painters weren't trained artists. A lot of them were just farmers who pick up a brush because it paid better and beat working in the fields all day. The whole thing ran like an assembly line. One person does the background, another the figures, someone else the finishing, and it worked. At its peak, Da Vinci's oil painting industry was generating 4.2 billion RMB a year. All here are within 0.4 square kilometers, churning out Van Goghs and Picassos day after day. Which brings us to the obvious question, is that even art? That is exactly what a documentary in 2016 set out to explore. China's Van Goghs, the documentary that put this village on the map, exploring the stories of the painters behind the scenes. And today, I actually found the studio of the main character himself, Zhao Xiaoyong, right here in the village. Walking around his space was genuinely fascinating. There were paintings of him standing next to Van Gogh, imagining scenes of the two of them together, which I found really moving, actually. A man who spent his whole life inside Van Gogh's world until Van Goghs became part of his own story. And even though the documentary made him pretty well-known afterward, in person, he's just really humble, really ordinary. His daughter also helps running things now. Designing fridge magnets, notebooks, little souvenirs for tourists. I picked up a fridge magnet of Venice for 30 RMB. And somehow we got talking about Italy. I mentioned I used to study there, and his face just lit up. He said that's always been his dream. Florence, the galleries, the museums. He made it to France and Netherlands once, saw the real Van Goghs. And that alone already changed everything for him. But Italy, still on the list. Talking to him, you just get this sense, this is someone who genuinely loves art, not just as a way to make a living, as a way of seeing the world. After visiting Zhao's studio, I kept walking around and went into a few more galleries to get a better sense of what's actually going on here now. And pretty much everyone told me the same thing. Business is not what it used to be. After the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic, and the recent trade tensions, the big overseas orders dried up. Painters who used to ship containers full of paintings to Europe every month are now mostly waiting for individual customers to walk through the door. However, walking around, it doesn't feel dead. It feels different. A lot of the old workshops have transferred into experience spaces. Pottery, painting classes, little cafes. For like 50 RMB, you can just sit down, pick a brush, and paint something yourself. The government has also been pushing them in this direction. More cultural tourism, more creative experiences. Less just churning out copies for export. And honestly, some of them have figured out really well. Which brings me to one gallery I spent a bit more time in. Because their story is actually pretty interesting from a business perspective. I spent time with one gallery that isn't just thriving, it's thriving. They got four floors, and each one has completely different styles. European classical, new Chinese style, contemporary abstract, experimental materials. And almost all of it, original work. The gallery owner also shared a lot of stories behind the paintings. The ideas and vision behind each piece. The artist's philosophy gave me a completely different perspective on this industry. Their model is built on two things. On one side, long-term partnerships with hotels, real estate developers, interior design firms, stable large-volume clients who need quality art at scale. On the other side, there's side contracts with reputable Chinese artists, award-winning painters, professors from top art academies like CSFA and Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Original work with real provenance behind it. This is a gap they found. Between the cheap replica market that's dying and a high-end gallery where most people can't access, they built something in the middle. Accessible, original. And they still get overseas orders too. What I appreciate the most is how they respect each artist's identity and creative vision. Like some artists only paint flowers, that's their thing and that's who they are. Instead of asking them to paint something else, the gallery actually goes out and finds the right buyers for that specific style, matching the art to the audience, not the other way around. And that's what stuck with me the most. The fact that someone here looked at a shrinking market and instead of giving up, figured out a completely different way to play it, bringing art back to what it was always meant to be. That's the real story of Dafeng Village right now. Not decline, but reinvention. After all of that, I ended up in a village square. Families just chilling, kids running around. And I got drawn to other local aunties who were selling street food. This time it's a Chaoshan-style dish called Haipeng Xiaomi. My first time trying it, it's kind of like a sticky, chewy version of dumplings. Haipeng Xiaomi, let's have a try. It is quite good actually. Fun fact, most of the residents here are Chaoshan people. And if you know anything about that culture, it's built on one thing, hard work, resilience, and a willingness to just go for it, which honestly explains a lot about this place. One more detail that stuck with me is 70% of the painters nowadays who stay in Dafeng Village are women, people who found a way to make a living through art without having to leave their families behind. Close to home, raising their kids, doing something of their own through a paintbrush. So where's Dafeng Village today? It's smaller, quieter, the era of mass shipping in Dubai to Europe mostly over. But it didn't disappear. It became something different. Original artists moving in, painters who spent decades copying Van Gogh now asking, what do I actually want to paint? If you ever find yourself in Shenzhen, come here, try the street food or experience making an art piece yourself. And if you have time, stop and talk to a painter. The story behind the brush is always more interesting than the painting itself. I'm Baloma, and this is what I do, discovering the real stories behind modern China. If you enjoyed this, follow along and let me know what you think in the comments. I would love to hear from you.