What does this peaceful, Chinese oil painting village.
Have in common with the largest wholesale electronics markets in the world?
Believe it or not, they are alot more alike then you think.
And similarities explain alot more about how Chinese industries
and manufacturing is organized. And it's so cool
and way different than anything i ever experienced, before coming to China.
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I am in here Dafen oil painting village which is probably
my favorite places in Shenzhen second only to
the electronics market. Now they called
neighbourhoods like this urban villages where you
got like apartments above and then like workshops
and retail spaces whatnot down below. Even though
this probably isn't what you think of when you hear the word village.
It's world famous for producing really high volume
of oil paintings and particularly impressionist art
reproductions especially Van Gogh, if you
ever seen reproduction starry night
chances are it came from here. In recent years it has
evolved beyond just mass producing starry night and
sunflowers and moved in to
also doing custom portraits
and original art. Across town here in Huaqianbei neighbourhood
are the worlds largest wholesale electronics markets
and the epicenter of the Shenzhen electronics manufacturing ecosystem,
which is known to produce a large percentage of the world's electronics.
If you have a hover-board or toy drone or
a cheap pair of copy Beat headphones,
chances are it came from Shenzhen
And there's a likely chance that a least some part of it came
through one of the companies that have booth here in the markets.
So what makes these places so similar ?
When on the surface they seem so incredibly different.
You might have noticed, that they both have roots in creating low priced copies
of Western goods. But that's not what I'm actually talking about.
But now you would be right both places do have a
reputation for copying but aleast that partly deserve.
And well, both of them are working to move past that
towards creating original products in works.
The reality is that, it's still part of the business here.
But if all you have come away with this video is further strengthening of
old stereotype that all Chinese people do is copy things
than you are missing most interesting part.
What i think is most interesting about these places is how
the industry is organized. And the incredible opportunity that
offers to both the insiders and outsiders.
And i think we can stand and learn alot from it. They both are made up of small
independent business that are super specialized working incredibly closely together.
Both collaborating and competing doing the one thing that they are really good at
Lets take a deep dive in how they are organized. And try and figure out what's makes them so chaotically efficient.
First we start with supplies, for paintings you need paint and you need canvas
There are shops all over the neighbourhood selling both.
For electronics you need tons of different parts and components.
Ranging from chips to screws to batteries.
They're distributors and factory booths all over the markets selling these.
And then you need very specialized services.
Things that might require expensive machinery and that
just don't make sense to everybody to try and do themselves.
For many paintings both for preproduction and custom portraits
the painter will lightly print a copy of the painting on the canvas using a large format inkjet printer.
Now it doesn't make sense for every painter
to own their own inkjet printer cause they are expensive
and honestly, they just sit idle most of time while they are painting.
so instead there are print shops in the neighbourhood
that will take your canvas, take your picture via We-chat
and print the picture on the canvas for a very small fee.
Similarly, for electronics you need a Pcb or a printed circuit board
to solder all the components to. it's essentially
the wires that connect everything together. This needs
to be custom designed and manufactured for very version of the product.
I made a video last year about how Pcbs are made.
You can watch that here, but needless to say
you need alot of machines and a big factory
to make Pcbs. So, there are factories that do nothing
but make Pcbs. And alot of them have
booths here in the markets where you can take a look at their sample of their works
Similarly, there are framing services and custom keypad manufactures
And Pcb assembly services aka Pcb-A that will solder
the components on to a circuit board for you
Next, you need tools. If you're a painter
that means things like paint brushes, palette knifes, easels
for electronics this is everything from solder plots
to screw drivers, oscilloscope and some other test equipments.
Both areas have tool shops that sell
all the specialized tools you need for their respective industries.
I have a bunch more i wanna show you, but first i wanna
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Now, lets get back to exploring all paintings and electronics.
Now, we haven't actually talked about who makes the finish product yet.
For paintings it's obvious it's the painter themselves
that are taking all of that paints and supplies
and tools and services and turning that into a finish painting.
For electronics, it may not be immediately clear though.
It certainly wasn't to me when i first came to Shenzhen.
The equivalent of a painter in the electronics world might be called
the contract manufacturer if they
are making the product for somebody else or just
manufacturer if they making the product to sell themselves. The important part is that they are
the ones finding and working with all the components
suppliers and sub-contractors making or supplying
all of the individual parts and then putting all those parts together
during what's typically call final assembly.
This is where you typically see a long assembly line of people
with a big conveyor belt running down in the middle. We are not done yet though
we still need to package up the product or the painting for end customer/
For electronics that means putting it in a nice box with the logo
and name and features and barcode
so that it can sit on a store shelf. These shops along here
will make you the custom packaging to your specifications
or they will sell you a generic packaging that
you can buy straight of the shelves. For paintings
i think the equivalent is framing
there are ton of framing shops in Dafen
that will make a custom order frames for your paintings.
Finally, we have to actually ship the end product to the customer
and the international shipping particularly from China
is a complicated dark art especially when fragile paintings
and electronics with batteries are involved
There are logistic companies that specialized
in packing and shipping products in both Dafen and
Huaqiangbei they can handle
things like custom declarations and they also service middleman
for companies like fedex
and DHL and they can also do things
like sea-shipments with, like you know
like if you ship a entire container or something. So, now we come full circle.
From basic supplies to a finished shipped product.
And with exception of maybe some chips and some brand name oil paint
its all being done by either individual or very
small companies working independently but in really close cooperation with each other.
This is unlike any industry i have seen in US
maybe it was like this a hundred years ago
this model offers such a incredible opportunity for people with some hassle.
For the most part everything is happening out in the open and is open to everybody;
If you wanna participate as an outsider you can just physically
show up and find a place for yourself. Whether its
as an in customer buying a pre-made product
or having one custom made or whether its taking advantage of all of the parts
and supplies and learning it how to put it together it yourself
or if you end up remixing the existing services
in new and exciting ways but regardless nobody is gonna refuse this
to sell you a part or service you are free to come and
hustle alongside everybody else.
Between 2000 and 2012
64% of China's urban population went from
lower class to middle class and the correct
response to those numbers in case you are wondering is holy 🍌🎾🦇
It's incredible and i think partly responsible for that is
ecosystems like Huaqiangbei and Dafen
and with that i turn it over to you guys do you think like places like this should exist
and if so what should we be doing as societies to
encourage them to flourish. Leave your thoughts down
in the comments below. Also if you know other places
like this i would love to come and visit. let me know about
that too. I wanted to add a little bit of a foot note
on to this story. At the beginning i mentioned that
China is trying to move away from manufacturing
other peoples goods for them based on their designs and move
towards manufacturing goods of their own designs
In a one way this has been dub as is moving way from
made in China towards created in China
And literally while i have been out shooting this video
Dafen has been renovated around me
presumably to help encourage this shift.
All of these alleys that i am walking down
had painters booths in them. Two days ago three days
ago and they're all gone now. They have been tearing
out alot of the painters work spaces in the narrow alleys
like this one.This had painting spaces in it people
actively painting in it. Probably three days ago four days
ago. It was also super hard to find any of the large
format inkjet printers. I looked every where and
i couldn't really find a single shop.
Two years ago, they were every where they were 10~15 shops
I don't quit know what happened to them. All of the
footage that i have used is stuff i had shot in the past
from previous trips out here. Is all this renovation and
change is good for the people and the artist of Dafen.
Will it be a place where someone can work their way up from
nothing and make a living for themselves and create a
successful business, only time will tell. I really really
hope so. If you like to learn more about Dafen and the
painters here and their lives. There is an amazing
documentary called China's Van Gogh that is can't
recommend highly enough. I will put a link to that down
in the description. But completely out of sheer luck
i happened to meet one of the painters in that
documentary and got the chance to sit down with him
for tea. You are very famous now partly because you
were in this film. How is your life changed since this film
came out ?
And so how long you had been living in here in Dafen
and painting ?
Dafen have must changed alot in that time how is it
different ? what was it like 28 years ago compare to now
I am Scotty from Strange Parts. If you enjoyed this
hit that subscribe button down below and that little bell
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But for now stay tune for more adventures. I'll see you next time.