Gate of a creative art house.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

As the fame of the artist "paradise" spreads, visitors flood in, paying some 200,000 visits to the once-isolated village located in Sanshigang Township.

Xie Ze helped to mastermind the artist village. Founder of Hefei Champs Gallery, Xie was deeply moved by its scenery of “fresh grass and fallen flowers” on his maiden trip to Sanshigang one day in June 2012, and decided to set up an art workshop here. After going through a house search, lease talks, renovation, everything was finally ready, and Xie’s “Tile Studio” became the first in the village. Subsequently, art lovers poured in. This made Luyang think of creating a cultural and creative village.

According to Luyang district Magistrate Huang Weidong, the benefit for villagers is obvious: rent income --- some 7,000 yuan ($1,100) a year for a house, government subsidies for low rents and the energy brought by former city dwellers making a new life in the country.

Zheng Aimei, chief of Sanshigang Township, said that although both are artist villages, Cuigang is different from Beijing’s Songzhuang in that the

the latter is a village solely inhabited by artists, while in the former, artists coexist with the villagers.

With the success of Cuigang, Luyang has ambitions to build itself into a recreation center. Plans include building a music town and an international painters’ village near Cuigang and developing the local Three Kingdoms (220 AD-280 AD) Cultural Relics Park, as well as boosting water sports. The big picture is looking good.