Yongtaixing rice paper pith Painting Shop

Over a century ago, before photography was invented, and as overseas trade expanded and more Westerners visited China, painters in Guangzhou seized the opportunity to open painting shops near the Thirteen Factories area of the city. Foreigners congregated there, on Tongwen Street and Jingyuan Street, and hired artists to create a large number of different paintings for export. rice paper pith paintings were a type of export painting that primarily depicted social life and street scenes in Guangzhou. These palm-sized rice paper pith paintings sailed across the seas on countless ships, spreading the sights of Guangzhou (then known as Canton) in the East to all corners of the world, almost like hand-drawn photographs of Chinese landscapes.