Aug. 2020; Wet Paint, Sawdust, and Empty Shops

“Bloody tourists…” If you were to ask any real Londoner which phrase they find themselves repeating under their breath and through gritted teeth, it’s that one. Throughout the whole year London is inundated with tourists, even in January and February when it’s so bone chillingly cold you wonder why these wanderlust loonies aren’t sunning themselves on a beach somewhere, oiling themselves up like thanksgiving turkeys and sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. The attraction for the millions of travelers who flood into olde Londinium town is pretty well known; Big Ben, the houses of Parliament, Buck Palace, Jack the Ripper, the big church where Jay Chou got married etc etc, plus the hundreds of museums and galleries (all mostly free to visit) and of course the disgustingly overpriced Michelin star restaurants and boutique designer shops, all make the average fat pursed international tourist weak at the knees. The flipside to this is that when I lived in London, I had barely been to any of these tourist traps. In all truthfulness, I actively avoided nearly all places where the tourists go, because quite frankly, they are bloody annoying. Filling the already narrow and overcrowded streets and pavements with their damn baby push chairs, shopping bags, loud voices, getting lost, mum and dad arguing while the brat kids are chasing the pigeons, these are all enough to make you want to stay safely hidden away at home, have another cup of tea and watch the telly.

International tourism is on the up and up, and that in itself is a damn good thing. We need tourists. Many countries around the world depend on tourism for a massive percentage of their GDP. For several places around the world, tourism is literally their only source of income. There’s a terribly pretentious hipster expression that says “be a traveler, not a tourist,” that I find pretty ridiculous. Tourists visit new places, take photos, eat local food and buy souvenir crap they don’t need, “travelers” do the exact same damn thing, just with tie-dyed clothes and a beard. I love being a tourist. I love to stand out like a sore thumb amongst the locals and wander the streets getting well and truly lost, figuring out whats safe to eat, taking photos of stray cats and buying tourist crap to take home and give to friends in the hope of making them jealous of my worldly adventures. Plus I do try and be a good tourist. I buy from little street vendors and family shops, I don’t spend money in chain stores or expensive hotels (never had enough money to afford those anyway) and I try my best to integrate with the locals, go where they go, eat where they eat. Tourism is a great way for people to experience new cultures, new places, new sights and smells, put a little money into the local economy and leave with a wider view of the world. Buddha bless the tourists. And therefore to my mind this begs the question, why don’t we have any tourist attractions here in Shenzhen?

Now before you start your internal dialogue NO, Window of the World is not a tourist attraction. In fact it’s about as attractive as watching a public execution, and at least those are free. Nope, in my mind, Shenzhen has pretty much zero tourist attractions. For sure we get tens of thousands of visitors every year, of course mostly for business, but who in their right mind thinks “mmm I’ve got a few days off, where shall I go for a relaxing yet informative short vacation? I know, SHENZHEN!” Absolutely nobody, that’s who. And to me, that’s a real shame. We have an amazing city, clean and full of parks, we have mountains to enjoy the views and some of the beaches nearby are nothing short of incredible (except in the summer holidays when they are covered in rubbish.) But to allure the international tourists away from Bali or Singapore or other idyllic spots, no, we have nothing special to offer. Or do we…?

Perhaps the only place I might say is enough to beckon those from afar, a place absolutely unique it its conception and in its continued being, is the Dafen oil painting village. This quirky and idiosyncratic labyrinth of tiny streets was first dreamt up by foresighted and venturous Hong Kong business fella Huang Jiang, who set up a studio in this patch of old farmland to sell some pictures and train up a few apprentices. Skip ahead a few years, and the “build it and they will come” strategy was proven fruitful, as bucketloads of brush wielding artist types rocked up and wanted to get in on this paint scented golden opportunity. Dafen now has hundreds of modestly sized painting studios, and it’s guesstimated that, as an entire entity, gainfully employs over 10,000 painters, and that it produces around 60% of the entire planets oil paintings. 60%! So the next time you see some terribly tasteless painted monstrosity on your hotel room wall, remember that it more than likely came from here. I happened upon this little oasis of serenity in my first oriental summer, and I’d never been anywhere quite like it. The place seemed like the never ending alleyways and catacombs of Istanbul, albeit with the occasional passing smell of deep fried food coming from the dai pai dong eateries. It seemed to my still greenly naive senses that it took all afternoon strolling around exploring, and every lane and backstreet was yet another unfolding origami of acrylic treasures.

I usually visit Dafen about once a month, and have been dong for the past decade, but I still adore it beyond reasoning. I love the ever present smell of oil paint and cut wood from the framing studios also there. I love that you can kick back for an hour or two, grab a coffee or a beer and just be alone, walk, look, smile and greet the artists, and kinda feel like time has stood slightly still for a while. This is the only place in Shenzhen I can truly feel this way. (I even took home a pregnant dog from there once, that’s another story.) But unfortunately, Dafen has now changed, and not for the better. Until quite recently every side street and alley was blessed with the presence of artists and painters economically unable to afford their own studio, so they’d set up and paint in the rows between shops. This was real micro businesses, creating wondrous art in two square metres. These have now been told to move on, we can’t allow this flagrant disregard for rules and policies and blah de blah de blah. This, along with increasing rents and therefore lack of artists and scores more empty studios, endless construction and building of metro lines, apartments and more, has really taken the shine off Shenzhens only real tourist attraction. As B.B King says, the thrill is gone.

Walking through Dafen now it feels like a shell of its former self. The alleyways are empty, except for a handful of places offering painting classes for children. There are several new cafe coffee places now, all near empty. Only a few years ago, on any day of the week the place would be buzzing with life, full of artists, painters, customers and art appreciators, and then when the school kids got out it would turn to fantastically noisy chaos. Every time I go there now I can count more and more shops and studios permanently closed. The rents go up, the shutters go down, and they stay down. The school in Dafen is currently being demolished.

It’s still my favourite pocket of peacefulness in this tumultuous turbine of a city, but what will it look like in the near years to come is anybodies guess. A good friend of mine who owns a gallery and studio there has said that there’s whispers and promises of investment into the area, to market it for visitors and tourists and “make Dafen great again.” Another contrary whisper is that the business owners and artists simply cannot afford to stay there any longer, and are searching for another similar art and creative area in another city. All one can do is cross our fingers and hope for the best, that the powers that be mull this over wisely and think about a little more culture in this colossal city of ours. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Let’s hope art isn’t lost in Shenzhen.