{"id":368718,"date":"2026-01-08T00:27:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T16:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/?p=368718"},"modified":"2026-01-08T00:27:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T16:27:23","slug":"how-dafens-painting-industry-began-one-merchant-one-move-one-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/how-dafens-painting-industry-began-one-merchant-one-move-one-seed\/","title":{"rendered":"Les d\u00e9buts de l'industrie de la peinture \u00e0 Dafen : Un marchand, un mouvement, une semence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"peinture<\/a>
Panoramic View of Dafen Village<\/strong>

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The story of Dafen Village\u2019s oil painting industry begins with a single person\u2014and a turning point in China\u2019s reform era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1979, Shenzhen became one of China\u2019s first Special Economic Zones. But at that time, Dafen Village\u2014then part of the Buji commune\u2014sat outside the SEZ boundary. The village remained poor, with average annual income reportedly under 200 yuan. Yet history often works through geography: being \u201coutside the window\u201d of the SEZ unexpectedly opened a larger door. Buji\u2019s position beyond the border made it a natural site for processing export goods connected to Shenzhen and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While oil painting was still unfamiliar to most people in China, demand for hand-painted decorative oil paintings was already strong in Europe and North America. From the late 1970s into the early 1980s, production shifted toward lower-cost regions\u2014first to Hong Kong, and then, after China\u2019s opening-up, into the Pearl River Delta, where labor was even more affordable. This created a rare opportunity for the Shenzhen\u2013Buji area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"peinture<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One key figure was a Hong Kong art dealer named Huang Jiang<\/strong>, who had been in the oil painting business since the 1980s and served major international buyers, including large retail chains. To meet growing demand, Huang moved into mainland China early. He first set up in Huangbeiling, Luohu District<\/strong>, a location close to Hong Kong and well-positioned for receiving orders and market information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There, he established a large workshop\u2014about 600 square meters\u2014bringing together multiple painters to fulfill overseas orders by reproducing famous artworks. A few years later, rising rents and practical pressures forced him to relocate. In 1989, almost by chance, he visited Village de Dafen<\/strong>, about three kilometers from Buji town. At the time, Dafen was quiet and rural: farmland, livestock, scattered homes, and a population of fewer than 300.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Huang, Dafen offered the perfect mix: low rent, a calm environment suitable for painting, proximity to Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and low labor costs. With new orders in hand, he moved in with more than a dozen painters, rented a village house, and opened what became Dafen\u2019s first oil painting factory. This was the moment when \u201ccommercial painting\u201d\u2014mass-produced hand-painted artworks made primarily for export\u2014took root in Dafen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huang understood both management and market connections. Orders grew rapidly, competition was limited, and monthly output expanded from tens of thousands of paintings to far more. People who wanted to make a living through painting began arriving in Dafen. Huang also outsourced large volumes of work to smaller dealers and independent painters, helping an entire ecosystem form around the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"peinture<\/a>
Oil Painting Exhibition Hall of Dafen Village<\/strong>

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As the market expanded in the early 1990s, Dafen developed an efficient \u201cproduction-line\u201d model: a painting could be broken into steps, with each painter specializing\u2014backgrounds, coloring, edges, finishing\u2014passing the canvas from one station to the next. Many early workers were not formally trained artists. With quick training and repetition, they became skilled specialists on this workflow, capable of producing consistent results at remarkable speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the mid-1990s, Dafen had attracted over 500 painters<\/strong>, and supporting businesses\u2014canvas, frames, brushes, pigments\u2014began moving in as well. What started as a forced relocation became something far larger: a single practical decision planted the first seed of Dafen\u2019s oil painting industry\u2014one that would later grow into a globally recognized painting village.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of Dafen Village\u2019s oil painting industry begins with a single person\u2014and a turning point in China\u2019s reform era. In 1979, Shenzhen became one of China\u2019s first Special Economic Zones. But at that time, Dafen Village\u2014then part of the Buji commune\u2014sat outside the SEZ boundary. The village remained poor, with average annual income reportedly […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":368722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dafen-oil-painting-village"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dafennet.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}