Art industry thrives

Named China's first peony-drawing village, Pingle village in Pingle town, Luoyang, is thriving on its art industry as it teaches villagers to paint.

The China Pingle Peony Drawing Culture Creative Industry Park was built in 2011. It includes a main building, 200 painting studios and 1.7 hectares of peony sketching area.

The building has a hall for drawing and teaching, and an e-commerce center to help farmer-painters sell their work online. Last year, the industry park sold more than 500,000 peony paintings.

Guo Sanlong, 62, a farmer-painter in Pingle, started to draw peonies part-time in the 1980s. His paintings were sold for 5 yuan each in the late 1990s, but now, a piece 50-by-50 centimeters is worth more than 200 yuan.

"It's because of the rise in prices and the improvement of my ability to draw," Guo said.

He has visited the peony festival each year since it started. In 2015, he began renting a booth to sell his paintings.

Guo rented a studio in the industry park in 2011. Now his daughter-in-law helps him frame his paintings, and his son is in charge of selling them online.

"My paintings have been sold to people in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and also sold abroad in Singapore and Japan," Guo said.

He has noticed the growing number of painters in his village in the past decade and feels the fierce competition between them.

"We have around 1,000 painters right now. Everyone likes peonies, so I just have to focus on my painting," Guo said.

According to Lu Yi, deputy director of Luoyang's tourism development commission, in the first nine months of 2018 Luoyang has received more than 99 million trips from home and abroad, and has earned a total income of 88 billion yuan.

"We are arranging a program called 'Understand Luoyang by Study Tour', through which we aim to attract more overseas students. They will learn about the long history of Luoyang," Lu said.

Local government role

Besides opening up and attracting more tourists, Luoyang's government also works to perfect benefits and services for residents.

"We are building our public service system by organizing more free performances, installing cable TV in the villages and building 100 study rooms to enrich people's cultural lives," said Zhang Yong, director of the city's media regulating agency.

Forty-five study rooms have sprung up since January, and more than 207,000 books have been collected, which people can read and borrow.

Zhang Hongyun, 96, would visit the study room 10 minutes away from his home two to three times a week. The room is fully booked most of the time, so Zhang often brings his own stool.

"It's not easy to find newspapers in the post office now, but it's convenient to come here," said Zhang, a retired middle school teacher.

"I come here to read international news. I can see that China has grown its international influence in many ways."