Painting pilgrimage

Art students did not hear about Dafen until much later. One of the first to arrive in 1997 was Liang Keming, who had attended an academy in his home city of Meizhou, Guangdong.

"I'd liked drawing since I was young, so I decided to learn more," said the artist, now 45. "I didn't think I'd be able to make living out of it someday. Everybody said it was a useless skill."

He now runs a business with his wife, Liu Shuling, a former waitress who had no formal art education. They have two employees.

"We sell paintings to galleries and on average we make 200 yuan a day. It varies a little, depending on orders," said Liu, who supports two children and Liang's retired mother. "Rent has surged and painting prices have dropped, so we're having a tough time of it this year," added Liang.

Another former art student is Wang Yingliang, 30, who has won dozens of awards for his works since settling permanently in Dafen. He now sells paintings from his studio and said copyright is his biggest headache. "It can take me several weeks to finish an (original) painting but when others see it they can run off 100 copies," he said.

And it is not just the painters who are feeling the pinch, so too are gallery owners. "Since Dafen shot to fame, artists from across China have come in great numbers," said Huang Weihua, who runs an art shop. "With them came people who just don't understand art."

After the Shenzhen government announced plans to develop the village in 2004, more that 182 million yuan was allocated to rebuild roads, construct a museum and set up public facilities.

Huang Weihua, who studied art at college, said he quit his job as a reporter with a Shenzhen newspaper in 2006 to "pursue the lifestyle he wanted". However, his timing was not good. By then, some 20,000 painters had flooded in and gallery owners were simply buying whatever they could find, with little thought about whether they could resell it. "It was like eating a cake," he said. "When 10 people eat the cake, everyone gets enough - but imagine 100 people coming all at once."

To make matters worse, the financial crisis slashed orders from overseas. "We lost more than one-third of our orders," said Huang Jiang, who manages a gallery that used to sell more than 100,000 yuan in mass-produced paintings every month to hotels and supermarkets in the United States, Italy, France and Australia.

He said that a copy of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait, used to sell abroad for 500 yuan but is now worth only about 200 yuan.

The company has since turned its attention towards the domestic market. However, as bulk orders were low, he has had to dispense with the production line concept.

"The domestic market is huge. We can sell paintings of fruits, flowers and animals, and we can sell them at low prices," said Huang Weihua, who has hired agents in the capital cities of more than 30 Chinese provinces and receives about 150 orders a month.

"Those companies that couldn't recognize the market direction disappeared but new businesses arrived to respond to the market," he said.