Because of their adoration of the tiger, people in Minquan county of Shangqiu city, central China’s Henan Province often liked to make tiger-themed shoes, hats and pillows for their children, as well as create paintings of tigers to express their sentimental attachment to the beloved animal. Nowadays, the painting craft has become a tool for local rural residents to shake off poverty and make a fortune.
Wanggongzhuang village is situated along an old course of the Yellow River. Before the 1990s, the local villagers had lived in poverty, but in the 1990s some villagers who were working as migrant workers discovered tiger paintings were very popular in the market.
Following the instructions of local farming painters, some villagers started to learn how to create tiger paintings. Because local people regarded the tiger as a symbol of auspiciousness, the tiger paintings made by the farmers of Wanggongzhuang became well-received in the local market.
“A customer once placed an order for a tiger painting, and I didn’t expect that the painting would be worth so much money,” recalled Wang Peishuang, who engaged himself in the business earlier than most of his fellow villagers.
In order to lift himself out of poverty, Wang made diligent efforts to improve his painting skills and his efforts paid off eventually. “A piece of artwork finished by me has risen from less than 10 yuan ($1.478) in the past to tens of thousands of yuan nowadays,” the man introduced.
Nowadays, of Wanggongzhuang’s some1,300 villagers, over 900 are engaged in painting tigers, with more than 3,000 villagers from nearby villages taking part in the business and the industrial chain. At the art markets in cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Dalian and Harbin, booths selling tiger paintings from Minquan can be easily found. In addition, 30 percent of the works by farmers in Wanggongzhuang are exported to Japan, Bangladesh, and other countries.
The village also established a farmers’ painting cooperative and invited e-commerce platforms to promote sales of the tiger paintings. In 2021, more than 90,000 paintings were created by farmers in the village, generating a combined sales volume that reached nearly 100 million yuan.
In 2022, the Year of the Tiger, the tiger painting business in the village prospered even further. “In October 2021, we received an order for 800 tiger paintings placed by customers from Jilin Province,” said Wang Jianfeng, secretary of the Party branch of the village, adding that nearly all of the paintings ordered by the clients have been finished as of now.