Some Like it Fake
There is nothing that is not available in Dafen in southern China
A Gerhard Richter starts at 30 EUR, a small van Gogh costs 45, his ‘Sunflowers’ in medium size 100, Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ 120, Rembrandt’s self-portraits 150 and for the Mona Lisa’s smile you have to pay around 200, because it is supposedly not so easy for the Chinese to copy her. The output of the forgery city is gigantic: over 10 million paintings are produced here every year. Thousands of painters paint the works of great masters day and night in the smallest of spaces, which are mainly sold in bulk orders to Europe and America. Dafen’s hard-working inhabitants live from, with and despite the great art, children grow up between Klimt’s Kiss and Munch’s Scream, families sleep under van Gogh’s Starry Night, watched by Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earrings
