The “artist quarter” Dafen lies hidden behind a monotonous development and turns out to be a labyrinth full of workshops, studios and galleries.

Here every square meter is dedicated to the art or the production of oil paintings of all kinds. Dafen is considered the world’s largest workshop for oil paintings and copies of world-famous paintings from all over the world. From 30 EUR there is a van Gogh and other masters to buy. The district is only about 0.8 square kilometers in size and houses about 8,000 artists and another 10,000 service providers. Between the copies there are also independent artists and well-known galleries. The first Dafen International Oil Painting Biennale was scheduled to take place here in October, but there was no indication that it actually took place there. There were construction sites and construction fences that pointed to it, but it is unclear whether it could be realized until then. This discrepancy between vision and reality is visible in many areas of this city. The two worlds are extremely apart.