Among them is 48-year-old Yu Xia from Heilongjiang province who arrived in April and has since been trying to paint a frog in a humanlike posture. Her fellow trainee, a middle-aged male automobile agent from Shaanxi province, is making a portrait of a woman across the room - and he is "here for a glimpse of village life in Fujian".

The premises comprise 42 studios, with galleries, exhibition halls and training workshops on different floors. A plaque extols the project's "cultural vitality and economic prosperity".

Lin posts the paintings to WeChat, the messaging app of Chinese technology company Tencent Inc, when they are ready for sale.

While prices vary depending on how appealing a piece is to a potential buyer, the smaller artworks can fetch up to 500 yuan ($78) and the larger usually sell upward of 1,000 yuan, according to another teacher at Antai. It could take a fortnight for a painting to sell online.

It is not clear how many of the participants in the program take up art as a career once they step out of Antai.