If you heard that the town where you have lived your entire life was going to be demolished, what would you do? For Huang Yung-fu, a former soldier from Taiwan, the answer was pick up a brush and paint.
For the past 10 years, Yung-fu has been waking up at 4:00 in the morning and decorating the drab cement walls, pavement, and windows of his old village with an explosion of playful murals in kaleidoscopic colors. What began as an artistic protest against the demolishment of his village has now turned into a whimsical world of cartoon-like people, abstract animals, and surrealist art that covers every centimeter of concrete in this former military settlement, which is now known as Rainbow Village.
Now more than one million visitors flock to the village every year to meet its elderly artist and lone permanent resident, affectionately known as ‘Grandpa Rainbow’. And the craziest thing is that while covering every corner of the village in a vivid dreamscape may seem like Huang’s life work, the self-taught artist only picked up a brush 10 years ago at the ripe age of 86. Not only has he transformed his Taiwanese settlement into a real-life storybook, but he saved it from demolition in the process. Have a look here to read the incredible story behind Rainbow Village and the man who saved it from its doom through vibrant art.
