A Day in Dafen, China

I hereby nominate Dafen Oil Painting Village, Buji Town, Shenzhen, China, as one of the world's truly special places. And, as Kelly A. says, "It's just so nice knowing it's there and that we can visit any time we like." In fact, and on this point we all agree, it's so you can visit this village "anytime you like" that makes it worth going through the hell of getting a multi-entry China visa.

Welcome to Dafen!
Those buildings in the background
are in Buji Town.
Not part of this special place at all.

These days, it's even easy to visit because all the taxi drivers now know where it is. Nearly six years ago, when I first tried to find the place, no one knew what I was talking about. And then - my first jaunt out there with Margaret after I finally got the address - our lovely taxi driver treated it as an adventure out into the wilderness. And then came the period when taxi drivers got angry and swore at you because it was thought "too far out".

These days? Taxi drivers practically expect every Foreign Devil who gets into their taxi to want to go to Dafen ...

... and have installed TV sets
for the back seat to play you
Tom & Jerry cartoons
for the long drive ...

... they're all fine with it.

The road works are nearly completed too so it's almost a pleasant trip.

The only real problem is crossing that damn highway after the taxi drops you off. That perpetually red broken light at the zebra crossing! Those four lanes of speeding cars and trucks! That long wait for a break in the traffic so you can risk your life dashing across! And standing in the centre of that highway with trucks whizzing by so fast? That is one of life's truly heart-pounding experiences! (If you won't fix that damn light, Shenzhen City Council - and it's been at least five years, you realise - how about building a sky-bridge?)

But then you're finally across and you look down into the gully and it's all so peaceful and beautiful you find yourself exhaling and your body slows, your guard lowers and, well, everything immediately becomes very relaxed and special. And then you pass the hand ...

The hand

... and, like stepping through a Magic Portal, - ta dah! - you're in Dafen; the land where Leonardo di Vinci rules ...

Leonardo di Vinci
watching over the central Square.
Hate that pretentious new plinth!

... and where the first thing you encounter is the completely unexpected North Queensland cyclad!

A long way from home!

... and then you're in among the twelve city blocks of cheap-as-chips art ...

Tiny sample of the art for sale.

... with streets lined with galleries selling every type of art imaginable ...

Winsiest sample of galleries!

... and lanes and back alleys housing the cubicles where the artists actually work.

Artist at work.
More of these cubicle photos down below.

The artists of Dafen produce over five million paintings each year, 25% of which are original. (Notice how I avoided saying 75% are "tributes".) However, the number of original pieces increases every year and they even appear to be encouraging that, what with the new auction house - Shenzhen Dafen Yihai Art Auction Company - now up and running, and the building that formerly housed The Museum of Modern Chinese Art collection now displaying the latest original paintings by Dafen artists.

I have just relished watching this place grow up. It's going to be HUGE one day, you realise, as an International art centre, so I feel like I'm in on the ground floor visiting as often as I can.

This visit? Since Keith is still on his "high-dudgeon China boycott" - because China was mean to New Zealand over the melamine scandal - I again went with the Aitkensens.

Shot I took for their Christmas card.
Note the wonderful rough-hewn
old-wood furniture
and that truly sus "Heidelberg School"
Australian painting.

Lovely people, lovely to be with, very relaxed and fun, although this time artists weren't forever giving little Macy paintings, although she's still as gorgeous as she ever was!

Macy with "that damn scarf".
She kept losing it.
I bet her 10 yuan it wouldn't make it home.
Wonder if it did?

I had warned them beforehand they shouldn't expect as much as last time, because ... well, remember my last post about Dafen - the one from about two months back - when I so angry that France had swept through and stolen all the best artists and paintings so they could set up their own artists' village in the south of France. I thought it would kill Dafen and I was on such a "First Muaroa, then Rainbow Warrior, now this! Hate, hate, hate France!" rant! Should have guessed, since this is China, that innumerable new waayyy-talented artists would step in to fill the void! And that is indeed what has happened.

These new artists even see "La Dafen" as their goal; like, if they get good enough, they too will one day be swept off to France for a spell! And they're all so into the Impressionists et al, it's clear they all yearn for the day when they too can jaunt over Provence, wearing berets and being all "la bohemian", and casually slapping paint onto their canvases instead of taking care, the way they do now.

So France is hereby forgiven, although not for Muaroa, and definitely not for Rainbow Warrior; simply for Dafen ... although NOT for stealing Dafen's greatest Dunhuang Tribute Artist! Him, I want back!

Overall, these days, Dafen looks healthy, happy and prosperous. Everyone's getting into fashion and shopping, and books, and becoming foodies, and doing all those "spare cash" sorts of things.

Love this outfit

These guys are totally
"too cool for school"

Fashion-victim.
Shoes NOT for shuttlecock

And, like everyplace on earth,
you wouldn't want to be an
artist's wife for quids!
And that was a really brutal glare
those two women gave each other.
Wife and husband's model?

And there's a definite re-sinofication thing happening, where they're making old buildings look more self-consciously Chinese:

Sinofication in progress.

I find this an excellent move, particularly if it means that this gallery rips that offensive plastic covering off its genuine Ching Dynasty courtyard house:

I'm sure this sort of renovation is a
criminal offense in most countries!

And you know those old buildings that were being torn down last year? And how I thought "This is the end!"? Well, they've replaced them with almost identical buildings, only slightly nicer, stronger and "more bohemian"!

New building!

Clearly, these villagers now know their genre! And, despite those pockets of sublime Ching Dynasty courtyard houses, it is clearly this:

Old buildings

Oh, speaking of pockets of courtyard houses reminds me! As we were walking around, Kelly suddenly exclaims "Good heavens! It exists! In my memory, it's all so surreal, I thought I'd dreamed it."

Kelly sees her "dream building".

This is the Ching Dynasty courtyard house/gallery where we went last year and saw amazing, so-perfect, so-exquisite, so-right-for-the-space paintings of white water lilies, all now sold and replaced with rather icky "Heidelberg School" paintings of the Australian Outback which just look WRONG in here. However, to reinforce its existence for Kelly, and because David A. secretly wanted to check out the rough-hewn old wood furniture in the place, we went into the gallery and partook of a tea ceremony. That's when we were told that the building isn't really Ching Dynasty ...

- although the back part is -

... and that the owners bought the building a decade back, tore most of it down and rebuilt it exactly the way it was. And kudos to them too! Despite the current crop of art, it's indeed surreal and "dream-like" and I love it, although I kinda like the this-century Dafen buildings too.

Oh, and, being Irish and so adoring nose-thumbing-at-corrupt-authority protests, I totally love what an artist has done outside the building that once housed The Museum of Modern Chinese Art. But that story is so big, I'll save it for another post.

The building formerly known as
The Museum of Modern Chinese Art.

And then it was a stroll through the village and I was astonished at how many people knew me. Heaps of artists did that cute v-fingers-point at their own eyes and then a single finger pointed at me, which I've never seen done anywhere else on the planet, but which I assume means "I recognise you!" and then they'd smile. And my naughty little artist friend (post below) squealed delightedly and raced away for his camera to take photos, although I suspect he really wanted image for some "Gruesome Gweilo" project he's working on. And so many gallery owners recognised us and I had some truly cute mostly-mimed conversations about how they went during the floods.

Gorgeous artist cum gallery owner.
My favourite type because here
no one's being exploited.

Those floods - "big water time" - six months ago were huge, and, from what I was able to understand, everyone remembers them with great fondness; that, despite the water coming up to their chests, they were able to save the paintings, stow them upstairs, and then go out and help everyone else, which bonded them all into a real community and everyone forged massive friendships and everything was just great!

Actually, it's this new-found fondness everyone has for each other that is most different about Dafen these days. Since we first discovered it, it's become a real village. You know, don't you, that Dafen wasn't initially "organically-grown"; that it started life back in 1989 when Wal-Mart ordered 10,000 reproductions of European masterpieces from a Hong Kong art dealer and so he gathered together 26 extremely talented painters, got them rooms and studios in a flood-prone-so-cheap-rent gully, put them to work churning out "tributes" ... and the rest, as they say, is history!

To think Wal-Mart actually achieved something truly great! Accidentally, however, so let's not give them kudos for it!

And, naturally, we had to stop by "our cafe" ...

Our favourite food place.

... to see how "nervous break-down guy" is getting on. He's so sweet and too-gentle-for-this-world ... and since I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for finding me those Chinese-speaking Hungarians the night after I was strangled by that horrible man in Guangzhou and was suddenly and strangely overwhelmed with fear of being out alone in China after dark ... so we never go to Dafen without eating something at his place.

Also, this time David A. wanted to see "the engine room" of Dafen, so we wandered through all the back alleyways and watched artists at work in their cubicles ...

Artist at work in cubicle.

... where, away from the galleries, the prices instantly tumbled ...

Look at the prices on these jade carvings.
Astonished?
Probably reject pieces although
they looked fine to me.

... and Macy encountered her first male nude.

Taken aback although not affronted.
(Always wanted to say that!)

...and that's when my camera stopped working and I realised that a mean skunk-weasel had swopped my 8. memory card for their 2. and so I can't show you anything more ...

... which is a shame because, here in the back alleys, we saw something which I'd better not talk about since Venetian Casino in Macau may not like it - although most likely they won't care - and will just see it as a chance to not pay as much ...

... and then we checked out the new auction house that's just opened - with the intention of marketing original Dafen paintings, so you must support it - website above - and didn't rat on their "resident English-speaker" who goes by the proud name of Elementalisa who we quickly realised is, you know, kinda-faking her facility for languages but who is so sweet we pretended to understand her when the other folk were around.

And then, to end up the day, we checked out the latest work by a very talented original artist we've long liked but had reservations about ... "artist sublimating his serial killer desires" stuff ... and I just wish my 8. memory card hadn't been filched because I'd love to show you his latest work. Previously, aaahhhh! Although vastly talented and original, there was something so sick and deeply disturbing about his paintings, but this time there was baby-paraphernalia everywhere around his cubicle and he seemed deeply contented and his new work is just amazing. He's kept what made his old paintings so interesting but they no longer make your skin crawl. Maybe David A. will give me a couple of his photographs so you can see for yourself.

After that? It was dark so we stumbled up the hill back onto the killer-highway, and managed to hail a red taxi (N.B. they're the only ones allowed into Lowu, so you don't need to change later as you do if you get a cab of another colour) after only ten minutes. Amazing!

All this for no more than pocket change?
How can you stay away?

So, now you've seen it, you agree? One of the world's truly special places? An instant contender on your "1000 places to see before you die" list? Yes? Me? I truly love, love, love Dafen, but let's not tell Wal-Mart.