For a long time, the town's farmers liked to paint after finishing work. In the early 1980s, some farmers, including Chen Liangsheng and Li Qinggang, developed painting into a profession and made quite a good living out of it. Gradually, other families caught onto the art industry.

Shen Yunxiang, a 30-year-old local villager, runs the Sanpi (three kinds of skins) Painting Workshop, which features original paintings using the skins of trees, pigs and cattle. Her works have characteristics of both oil painting and traditional Chinese ink painting.

At the end of the 1990s, Shen was a student at an ethnic college in Guilin. She went to Yunnan for an internship where she witnessed local painting selling well and decided to develop ethnic painting in her hometown.

When she returned home after graduation, the people there were doing traditional Chinese painting, and Shen decided to try something different. After many failed experiments, she found a way of painting images of ethnic minority people on animal skin and tree bark.

Her workshop now has a dozen employees who are local painters, including young men and middle-aged women. Their paintings have been sold in the United States, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asian countries with yearly sales of more than 6,000 pieces at a total value of 300,000 yuan ($43,000).

Wutong has 800 inhabitants engaged in the painting business, and there are 20 workshops that have more than 20 employees each. The annual output value of the town's painting industry is around 80 million yuan ($11 million).

Meng Wensheng, who is in his 20s, has been in the painting business for five years. The first three years were as an apprentice and in the latter two years he began to paint pictures independently. It takes Meng an average of 60 minutes to finish a painting, which sells for around 20 yuan ($2.90), providing a monthly income of 3,000 yuan ($434)-a high salary in the local context.

"It's in my own interest to be in the painting business. If I didn't like it, then I would venture into the outside world to seek work," said Meng, whose biggest dream is to have a painting workshop of his own some day.

To facilitate the farmers' painting business, the local government has hired a few professional painters to train the farmers. It also promotes local paintings via the Internet.

According to local official Liu Juan, Lingui County is planning a farmer painter village, which will be the platform for showcasing and trading farmer paintings and also serve as an artist training camp.

"We are thinking of setting up a brand now, which will push the business into an industrialized and standardized direction," said Liu.

Tang's way

Among the torchbearers of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, one came from a remote ethnic minority village in Guagnxi. Tang Wangqi, head of Bainiu Village, which is dominated by Yao minority people, led his fellow villagers to wealth and earned himself the privilege of carrying the Olympic torch.

Bainiu belongs to Fuchuan County, which claims to be the hometown of navel oranges. The village has developed its own way of orange management: setting up a growers' association, which is in charge of unified planning, management and the sale of fruit.

So far the village has 110 hectares of orange fields, and each household manages at least one hectare. In 2007, the per-capita income for villagers stood at 8,000 yuan ($1,159) and in 2009, it is expected to exceed 10,000 yuan ($1,400).

Tang developed his way and enjoys high prestige among local people. He used to be a migrant worker, but decided to return to the village after broadening his horizons during his time living in a large city.

The orange growers' association is a self-governing organization that takes 4 cents of every kg of oranges it helps villagers sell. The money is used to cover operational costs and is put into a rural development foundation.

Today the village has built a school, a cultural center, a library and leisure facilities with the money.