Dafen - With his long hair and crumpled shirt, Chen Honglin looks every inch the budding artist, but these days he thinks less about expressing himself and more about surviving in China's fake art capital.
The 24-year-old, who has spent the past year making meticulous copies of famous paintings at the Dafen Art Village in southern China, asks himself how much longer he can last as orders drop sharply amid the economic crisis.
"It's something we talk about among ourselves," said Chen, who hails from northwest China's destitute Shaanxi province. "I'd be lying if I said we weren't somewhat worried."
The craft of copying, a vital element in China's economic rise, has literally been turned into an art form in this laid-back enclave in the middle of the nation's most thoroughly industrialised region.
Vincent van Gogh-style sunflowers and Jackson Pollock-esque drip paintings are to be had for just a little over 100 yuan ($14.5), and to the untrained eye it is not immediately obvious that these are just replicas.
This is the work of hundreds of creative 20-somethings who have gravitated from across the vast nation to Dafen, where a decent income could be combined with a Bohemian lifestyle in a pleasantly warm climate.
But as foreign interest has weakened, a slightly jittery atmosphere has set in among the hundreds of artists who live here, many of them highly trained even if they mainly occupy themselves with reproducing other people's work.
'Impact is very, very real'
"The impact of the financial crisis is very, very real," said Gong Fajun, a 27-year-old painter from central China's Hubei province, who has been in Dafen for four years and who said his income was down 40% from last year.
The artists live with their boyfriends and girlfriends in large dormitories, spending time in the carefree manner that has been the privilege of young painters and writers around the world for centuries. Life is good. Or it was.
The late-night debates by candlelight have turned from existentialism and free love to the problem of finding enough work to stay in business.
Ultimately, Dafen Art Village is just another of the export zones that have mushroomed along the eastern and southern coasts, catering to a world market with an insatiable appetite for cheap China-made goods.
Shops here typically sell 70% of their products to foreign buyers, so when the developed markets move into recession, it hurts.
Foreign guests who once arrived in massive numbers at Dafen are now few and far between, and have been since the crisis started to bite last year and as times have turned tough even steep discounts have been unable to attract interested buyers.
"I had a customer from Britain who just a few months back placed a large wholesale order," said Luo Wei, artist manager at Yishanhong Art Development.
"Then last week, he called and told me to cancel it all, even though he'd paid a large deposit. In the current climate, he simply didn't dare embark on any major venture," she said.
There is still the Chinese market, and in the narrow alleys of Dafen are portraits of President Hu Jintao, so lifelike that he looks as if he is about to jump out of his frame and shake hands with visitors.
"Usually companies buy the portraits to hang them in their office, but we've had a few private buyers as well. All of them Chinese, of course," said Cai Lijun, a painter and gallery owner.
"We could finish a painting of Barack Obama in just days if someone needed it, but so far no one has," she said.
- AFP