Dafen Artists Village, Shenzhen, China

Will write about yesterday's jaunt through Dafen tomorrow, but, in the meanwhile, here is a photo essay about this gorgeous artists' village in Shenzhen in South China.

Entry road into Dafen

Oh, and if you're wondering why I've spelt it "Dafen" this time instead of "Darfan" as I usually do, that's because, when I first discovered the place, no one had yet heard about it nor written about it so the English spelling of the name wasn't yet formalised. Now it has been and everyone is now spelling it Dafen, even though it's more properly pronounced as "Darh-Fan".

This says it all!

But less writing, more viewing, yes:

Dafen, China, Oct.2008

This time round, Dafen disappoints. Something strange has happened to the place, and I'm not talking about those floods or those stolen Chinese paintings from the Museum of Modern Chinese Art (see previous blog entries on Dafen) or the village being strangled out by China's stupid and capricious "Punishment Policy" regarding visas and the resulting restrictions to visits to the Mainland.

This Chinese artists village is still there, sure, but there simply aren't any of those knuckle-biting gorgeous paintings.

Dafen paintings of former days!
Note the Ming Jun jesters!

There's a paucity to what's left and it's now bereft of magic. There's a coarseness to the art that, well, isn't what Dafen-of-the-past leads you to expect. You know, it's like a locust swarm went through and took everything that's worth anything and all that remains is the, well, remains.

Naturally, asked what happened and the word is that France swept by and took all the best paintings and artists off to set up a similar artist village in the South of France.

Those bloody French!!! First Muaroa and now this!!!! If it is true, how dare they rob China of such a vast National Treasure! And how could China let it happen! Don't they know what an asset they had up there in Shenzhen.

Of course, "going off to the South of France" could be a euphemism for something vastly more sinister. Or maybe it was just a brief and necessary "cultural exchange". Or maybe it's fall-out from the Darfan floods and visa-restrictions-so-no-visitors-so-no-sales and so maybe all the genuinely talented artists just packed up their art and went back to whatever part of China they originally came from.

Obviously the truth of this one needs to be found since Dafen is one of my very special places, and very special discoveries, and I don't like that it's now so much less than it once was.

DAFEN ARTISTS VILLAGE - 2007

2008 - David A. has kindly lent me some of the photos he took back in 2007 of the day I took the A. Family up to Dafen to see it for themselves. In these photos are me - disguised as a yeti - David's lovely wife Kelly and their daughter, gorgeous little Macy, who was given a gift of a painting by an elderly artist because he found her so exquisite.

(You can also see more of David's beautiful photographs in the posting "David does China".)

WE DISCOVER DAFEN
(2005)

Well, finally, after two years trying to find a place that everyone seemed to think was a palpable fiction - "A village in China where everyone is an artist? Chock full of amazing paintings selling for pocket-change? What garbage!!!" - and after a great deal of fuss and bother, we got to Dafen yesterday and I'm here to tell you that, yes, it both exists and it is just lovely.

My dear friend, Margaret, was visiting from Australia and, when I told her all I'd heard about this village, insisted we go up to China to find it. And so, that's what we did. (Gosh, I just love Margaret. She isn't one of those people that just summarily dismisses things. She actually tries to establish the facts before calling something "a fiction." That is just so rare, isn't it!)

Since getting there was so fraught and difficult, I'll tell you later about the best way to get there so you can avoid all the fuss when you go yourself.

Hopefully, you'll also avoid being crushed to death in a stupid traffic accident. The drivers in Shenzhen are insane and it was sheer luck we weren't killed on four separate occasions. We even paid the taxi driver an extra 12 yuan both for skillful driving and the glorious occasion when he got into a wonderful screaming match with the driver of the bus that nearly killed us the worst!

Description of Dafen?: To be honest, it is a vastly more sophisticated village than I thought it would be. In fact, it's all sort of Parisian and, rather than being an actual village, is in a gentle-

sloped gully cut off from the rest of the vast insane metropolis of Shenzhen by a ring of highways. (2008 - See photo above.) It also does, thankfully, feel very different from the rest of Shenzhen because it's car-free, slow and pleasant and, instead of the usual Shenzhen-Sharks, is full of, well, gentle "arty" types.

There is no Starbucks or any other Western cafe/food franchise here, which means the rest of the world doesn't yet know this place exists ...

... but if you want something to eat or drink, there is however a very nice "Artist Cafe" that serves very decent pots of tea right in the heart of the place run by a very nice young man who kinda speaks something vaguely resembling English.

2008 - This cafe was called "Oil Painting Cafe" when we first visited, but is now called "Hong Chi Painting Coffee", which is much cuter, you must admit.

In appearance, Dafen's mostly a very modern-take-on-the-past, covering about a dozen city blocks: all gorgeous colours, interestingly-shaped old apartment blocks, lots with fascinating rounded Art-Deco corners and garret-style roof-lines ...

... with pockets of absolutely stunning Tang Dynasty courtyard houses, some restored and now used as art galleries, and others till private homes ...

... and there are more rambling cobblestone streets and dark alleyways than you could wish for and heaps of tiny little dark nooks of no more than one foot by three feet where you can see these artists painting, copying from prints of famous paintings or other-people's family photographs, with the most intense concentration, and, best of all, fascinating art everyplace you look, all over the streets and in shops ...

... and gosh, what art!!! Apart from thousands of those paintings you are forever cringing over in K-marts all over the world, there are wonderful

copies of probably every picture you have ever seen in every artbook ever published ...

... and, strangely, a lot of them have what Fijians call "a tau"; a spirit that leaps out of them and holds you transfixed. I thought it was only great works of art that have "a tau" but a significant proportion of these Dafen copies do as well. There were four in particular that I couldn't look away from and I intend to return as soon as possible with lots more money so I can buy all of them; as gifts I imagine, because I couldn't live with them long-term; the taus are that powerful.

As for the Museum of Modern Chinese Art? Mmm-hmm-hmmm! There's a story!!! You're probably hearing it here for the first and last time that there isn't one. The building is there, sure, and right in the heart of Dafen too, but there is definitely something afoot and I don't think anyone in Dafen has realised yet because they kept saying "It's just there. Museum. Yes, just there!" and "Yes, of course you can go inside." and "Go! Go! Great paintings there!"

But meanwhile we found all the doors locked and when we wandered around the outside of the very nice, huge, post-Modern glass and concrete building, peering through the windows, there aren't any paintings - except for the few remaining ones in crates surrounded by acres of wood-shavings - and the Red Guards kept screaming at us, presumably telling us to "Bugger off or die, you filthy foreign scum!!" and there was a red carpet right down the front steps that looked like it had been rained on several times, so ...

... well, I think somebody important visited the place and ... well, won't Dafen be angry when they realise what's happened!!! But rather than go into a treatise on CCP's rank corruption, let's talk about the paintings: much more interesting.

Well, when we were first wandering around, I fell so in love with the place I told Margaret I wanted to make friends with someone local so I had a permanent "IN" in the village and, yes, it happened. We met the sweetest little girl called Annie who speaks excellent English and is an artist who works out of a shop called (omitted), and she befriended us and, golly, turns out she's more than happy to supply us with whatever we want - she can paint in any style, she says - for the princely sum of 200 to 400 yuan (divide by seven for Oz dollars) a unit depending on the size and complexity, and she showed us her work and dammit if she isn't first-rate. (Found out a year later that she isn't actually an artist. Oh well!) One of the four pictures I saw "with a powerful tau" was hers.

Anyway, Annie is the artist we commissioned to paint the three adaptions of our favourite Frieda Kahlos.

The finished products!

She said it would take her a week to ten days to do the three and she'll e-mail me with photographs as soon as she's done, and then, if I like them, I'll go up to Shenzhen to pay for them and collect them.

You like the process? Easy-peasy, huh!!! And please don't tell me I'm being immoral and these are actually pirates and blah, blah, blah! Annie doesn't sign the work with the artist's name so they are more "tributes" than fakes!!! So there! And don't try to make me feel bad!

As for the ones we bought on site, I got two and Margaret got three, all for less than 500 yuan.

My Three!

Since it was Keith's birthday yesterday, I got him a gorgeously wrought copy of one we saw as an original in a gallery here in HK's Soho - Keith said at the time he loved it - by Huang Yong called "502". It's a modern reworking of those old "Love the Communist Party" and "Work hard for the Revolution" posters all screenprinted over with the numbers "502" and "8689" which supposedly, when spoken aloud, sound like Chinese for something (wish I could remember what! The gallery owner did tell us but I've forgotten) seditious.

I also got a very fine Andy Warhol's "Yellow Mao" but, on the train back, when I told Margaret it was Keith's birthday she got cross I hadn't told her before, so she bought it off me - I only charged what I paid for it myself - I should have quadrupled the figure since we were already over the border and that's what always happens - to give to him as a gift.

She herself bought three of Yu Chen's paintings from his series of faces of fat, bad-tempered babies wearing Communist Party caps which she intends to stick on the wall in a row behind her desk in her Principal's office back in Queensland. I think it'll be hilarious.

Now, before I tell you about how you can get there yourself, what else can I tell you? Oh yes, just in case you're thinking "I don't want to go there. Why would I want to buy copies?" or "Isn't it sad that there is a village full of amazing artists who simply copy other artists' works!", all I can say is that is something Margaret originally got cross about too ... so I told her about the artist I met two years ago - the one who first told me about Dafen Village - which is where he came from - and I repeated his desperately sad words when I asked him why he only copied: "I am a highly skilled painter without any ideas, creativity or originality, so what else am I to do?"

Anyway, the good news is, I suspect, to be found in the fact that so many of the latest paintings have "a tau", which leads me to believe there is something stirring there, deep in the heart of Shenzhen, and that, unless something goes awry - as it may well do in the immediate future if you consider that all the original paintings that were meant to engender creativity were heisted, undoubtedly by CCP cadres - we could well be seeing something probably not witnessed since the Italian Renaissance; a vast explosive outpouring of genuine creativity and originality! In five years? Ten years? Twenty years? What is the minimum amount of time needed to undo the desperately restrictive education? Definitely, that will have to be stripped back before they are finally ready to fly ...

... and also there are dozens of little children running around, mostly naked, with oil paint smeared over their hands who are wiping them all over bits of paper creating and clearly pondering on the different shapes they make, and the shapes the other children are making ... and you can't tell me that won't lead eventually to some future interesting something-or-other.

HOW TO GET TO DAFEN

Now, finally, as promised, what we learned about how to get there without any fuss or bother:

First off, before you get to China SEZ, ask someone you trust to write the Chinese calligraphy for "Dafen Oil Painting Artist Village, Buji, Longgang District, Shenzhen" so you have something you can wave around, and, secondly, after you get to China SEZ, simply ignore everyone's advice; listening to anyone in Shenzhen is only a way to get yourself confused and angry, and quite possibly kidnapped and held for ransom someplace ugly and smelly, because they do things like that up there.

Since we were told at the border, after waving around our calligraphy, Dafen was about an hour distant and it would cost us about a thousand yuan to get there by taxi, we decided to bus it ... but our attempts to catch a bus simply got us an hour's worth of runaround with different people pointing us in different directions and telling us different numbers for the right bus (the right bus is actually 300) and different streets we were meant to be waiting on (actually you catch it at the bus stand at Lowu), and all the while we're being circled by Shenzhen-Sharks telling us a taxi would cost a thousand yuan but they could take us in their car for half that amount and since neither Margaret nor I would go anywhere with them - literally and undoubtedly - to save our own lives, in the end - after almost deciding to give up and just go to the Shangri-la Hotel for a massage, lunch and followed by an immediate trip home - we said "stuff it; let's pay", so caught ourselves an ordinary red metered taxi (apparently the different colours of taxis all mean different things but don't ask me what!) and got SUCH a surprise!

It cost us 38 yuan ... that's it! 38 yuan, plus the extra 12 bonus for the finest defensive driving we've ever seen ... and for allowing us to witness such a gloriously vocal almighty-sino-stosh! ...

And then the taxi back, which we hailed back on the highway, cost us only 37 yuan and that's with a 3 second stop-off at Dongman.

(Everyone told us Dongman was an amazingly French-looking curved street full of wonderful bistros with great food but one look at the vast hordes in the area Margaret goes "You can't walk through that carrying oil paintings." so we got the driver to take us back to Lo Wu instead)

And, immediately alighting the taxi at Lowu ... we walked straight into a nasty incident involving a lot of bludgeoning and cudgling, blood and violence ... and then the police ran up and we thought it was to end it all, but instead they began to kick the guys on the ground in the stomach and kidneys ... but then they spotted us and realised it was being witnessed by foreigners so they hawled the young guys off, presumably to finish them off somewhere more private.

Ah, China!!! China!!! China!!!

Now, as I have to go back in a week to ten days, I'm planning to empty out my bank account and just buy, buy, buy, buy, buy!!! Also, I want to order, order, order, order!

And if anyone wants something, well ... no! Annie is mine and I don't want anyone else exploiting her!

So, summing up: Darfan is real and is so worth visiting. And the big trick is to get your calligraphy done beforehand and catch yourself a red metered taxi.

Could it BE any easier?

The painting that started the whole thing.
Bought from the artist
who first told me about the village.

A DAY IN SHENZHEN, CHINA

The Frieda Kahlo knock-offs mentioned in the posting below are seen here. I had the paintings altered to look more like my niece Didi. I did intend to gift them to her but decided I loved them too much and so she's not getting them yet! That's what wills are for!




THIS IS PART FOUR OF A SET OF POSTINGS

After a two-hour long train trip (with no smoking carriage, damn 'em!) from Guangzhou I arrived in Shenzhen. (Since I have been to Shenzhen many, many times there will undoubtedly be a mass of future posts in here on the subject, I'll only skim with this one.)

1) Amazingly, for once Shenzhen was great. Sure, the usual sharks were out and the gorgeous carved greenstone statue of Kwan Yin I bought in Lowu turned out to be painted plaster, but it didn't cost that much, so ... lesson learned!

2) I braved the pickpockets and caught the Metro, where, all by myself and without them having a single direction in English, I ended up where I wanted to be: in Dongman having a late lunch in some nice outdoor cafe. I felt so proud of myself!

3) In crowded Dongman - which is less "Paris" than I was lead to believe - more like Mainland's Mong Kok - I saw lots of police brutality and public beatings and children as young as three getting hauled along, feet almost off the ground, dragged by the ears by two policemen each, one per ear, but these kiddies had a look of resignation which meant they were used to it and I had so many winsy-small littlies trying to sneak into my own bag to take my purse, I decided they were all undoubtedly long-term pickpockets for some sino-Fagin gang, so I let everything police-brutality-ish pass without interferring.

4) After late lunch, and having once again to retrieve my decoy purse from someone who looked too young to be out alone but still eminantly old enough to have his hand twisted and slapped, I caught a taxi to Dafen to pick up my commissioned Freida Kahlos.

This time the taxi dropped me off in a different place so I had to spent several most pleasant hours trying to get my bearings. It really is a gorgeous village. Tres arty and Bohemian. Oh, and I saw kids as young as eight painting the backgrounds of commissioned paintings, but I was fine with that. It's undoubtedly how they'll learn.

And I chatted with lots and lots of artists and wandered through a great many shops and there were so many wonderful paintings and I wanted so many of them, but decided since Annie was my friend I'd buy only from her, but when I finally found her shop, the price she told me for everything was three times as high as the last time we were there, so I didn't buy, and realised I should get over any idea that Annie is my friend and treat her as just another Shenzhen-shark!

But I did end up commissioning lots of new paintings because I simply couldn't help myself and those prices were still the same, and, by the time I came out of the shop, it was seriously dark and I desperately didn't want to be roaming the streets alone looking for a taxi - I guess I was still shaken up from being attacked the night before! - so I stopped off at Oil Painting Cafe - the same place as last time - and told the nice man there - the same guy as last time and he remembered me too - that I didn't want to walk the streets alone so he kindly stopped some passing Cantonese-speaking Hungarians and asked them to accompany me to get a taxi and they turned out to live in Shenzhen and had a car so I got taken all the way back to Lowu. Gosh, they were nice and I enjoyed them so much even if we couldn't talk, having no language in common.

5) Back in Lowu I couldn't find the Left Luggage where I'd checked in my bags, so spent several hours simply wandering, searching for it, and, yeah, yeah, doing lots of shopping, and eating, and having facials and massages - yes, I know it was only a few days since I'd last had all this done but Chinese massage is like Chinese food; half an hour later you feel like more! - and then accidently leaving my Freida Kahlos everyplace and constantly having to retrace steps to find them, and losing my way there too, but, all in all, it was one of those times when getting lost means finding lots of good new stuff and meeting lots of lovely people so is worth every second.

6) Realised from my luggage stub that this Left Luggage closed at 10.30 pm, and it was almost that time, and then I realised all the writing was in Cantonese and it struck me that I was truly an idiot and all I had to do was wave this stub around and ask people, and sure enough, within minutes I was where I was meant to be, collecting my bags.

7) Loaded down with stupid amounts of stuff, with nothing on wheels, having to struggle with shoulder-breaking-heavy bags draped all over my body, Freida Kahlo paintings knocking against everyone around me, kicking other bags ahead of me, I had to fight through the usual throng of 10,000 to pass all the way through Chinese and HK Immigration.

Why is there never a liveried chauffeur around when you need one?

OTHER MOST IMPORTANT IMFORMATION:
1) WHEN YOU VISIT SHENZHEN BE SURE TO BRING AN ENORMOUS WHEELED SUITCASE WITH YOU; PREFERABLY THE SIZE OF A SMALL CAR
2) SHENZHEN IS SO CHEAP YOU KICK YOURSELF FOR ANY MONEY YOU'VE EVER SPENT ANYWHERE ELSE ON EARTH. JUST REMEMBER YOU THEN HAVE TO CARRY IT.
3) SCRATCH THE BOTTOM OF ANY CARVED STONE STATURE BEFORE YOU BUY IT.

So there you go; my jaunting in China. It really was fun, and, like I said in Part One, the major thing I learned is that, sure, China can be really creepy but then there are lots of other times when it isn't!

Denise