Bu Shai Art Village

Yesterday I went to the coolest place. Jane, a friend from the branch, took Rachel, Jonny, and I to Bu Shai (pronounced Boo Ji). She has a driver so we all piled in the van with her three kids. It was a rainy day and we were debating whether or not to go because most of the stores display their things out on the sidewalk. We decided to go anyway since I will be starting work on Monday and might not get a chance for awhile. I am so glad we got to go. It was just streets and streets of artists and their paintings. I mean streets and streets. There were probably a hundred different shops. I bought a few pictures for our house. They are oil paintings on canvas. I will go back another day to get them framed because it is really cheap there. We had our family portrait framed a year ago back in the states and it cost $250.00 for a 20 x 30 frame. The same frame here would be about $50.00. They also will make shadow boxes and other custom items for you. They usually can finish them for you the same day if you get it there soon enough. Bu Shai is about an hour from here so it takes about a whole day to see it all. There is an artist there that will paint from portraits so we definitely will be doing that before we leave.


This is an oil painting of Hong Kong. It cost about $30.00 for this painting. This artist had some really cool contemporary art. He also did the same painting below using oils but with a knife instead of a brush. I really liked his art.
This painting is for Jonny's room if you didn't guess. He loves football and when he saw this he just had to have it. The painting only cost about $15.00. We thought it was funny that they painted a player from the University of Arkansas. The family we were with are from Bentonville and we thought this was cool. If you look closely they misspelled Arkansas. It says Arkanss. What are the chances of coming to China and finding a football painting let alone one of Arkansas. Jonny said that this player is Darren McFadden when he played there.