Lights from the portrait gallery shine on Harbin Central Street as night falls (CHEN RAN)

Song returned home in 1979, and became a security guard at Harbin Port in 1981 after he failed to pass the national college entrance examinations.

"I didn't care about the job, since my only wish when I was in the farmland was to return home as soon as possible," Song said. "My situation then was exactly what my father had described a million times before--I could not make a living on fine arts anymore."

Return to the arts world

His love of drawing was rooted deeply inside Song's heart, no matter how far away his job was from the arts. He then majored in Chinese at an evening university and finally obtained a college diploma. He said he found a sense of happiness through the courses, partly because of his hunger for knowledge; to some extent, they also made up for his failure in the national college entrance examinations several years earlier.

In the mid-1980s, his company set up an arts and crafts workmanship. Song managed to make bark paintings, as the Harbin Port where he worked was a major port for timber transfer. He then took charge of product design for eight years.

Song's career as a street portraitist began "accidentally." The 1,450-meter-long Harbin Central Street, the first pedestrian business street on the Chinese mainland, opened on June 1, 1997. European-style portraitists soon appeared on the street, but there were still relatively few. Painting portraits was easy for Song, but it was an unauthorized activity without a business license. What's more, it seemed far more difficult for him to get a green light psychologically than materially.

"I was too shamefaced to say, 'Come on! Have your portrait done!' at the very beginning. I felt like a beggar," Song recalled. "It is impossible for me to keep quiet on the street when I'm drawing in the glare of the public eye. Sometimes I have to pretend to be deaf to comments about my portraits that are murmured behind my back."

Song's wife, who worked in the textile industry, was the family's pillar when Song stayed home without any pay in the late 1990s. He finally found the courage to be a street portraitist in a park alongside the Songhua River during the May Day holiday of 1999, out of the need to survive and his love for drawing.

The emerging and old-fashioned business--getting a portrait done within a couple of minutes by sitting face to face with a portraitist--received a warm welcome among visitors, particularly when digital cameras were not as popular and accessible as they are today. It took about 30 minutes for the rookie Song to finish one piece; on average he painted 10 people a day. His income thus increased rapidly, as he charged 10 yuan ($1.25) each for a black-and-white portrait and 20 yuan ($2.5) each for a color one.

In the spring of 2009, Song passed the exam and obtained authorization to start up a business at the Harbin Central Street Portrait Gallery--the only authorized portrait-painting street in China--together with 19 peers. In Song's eyes, the gallery will help narrow the gap between fine arts and ordinary people.

"We are definitely contributing a lot to improving people's aesthetic judgment on the one hand, and promoting fine arts on the other hand. I am proud of that," Song told Beijing Review.

More importantly, Song gets along very well with his peers, who ought to be his biggest potential competitors. They either discuss drawing skills or play cards to kill time whenever the weather is bad or visitors are few.

"The competition is unavoidable, but we unite as one," Song said. "We are closer than friends, since we spend much more time with each other than with our own families every day."

Song said their work hours are basically in accordance with visitor flows, running from midday until midnight. The open-air workplace gives them deep tans. Huge bags under their chairs hold folding umbrellas, windproof jackets, accumulator lights, and kettles and food. Their hands look rough, as pencil graphite powder accumulates in their fingernails.

Besides the weather and the chilly winds that blow in at night from the Songhua River, which is less than a five-minute walk from the gallery, Harbin's five-month-long winter with an average temperature below minus 10 degrees Celsius dictates that the gallery be open only from May to October. Song does snow and ice carvings for local and non-local winter festivals when the gallery is temporarily closed.

"All my jobs have close associations with Harbin's tourism industry," Song said.

Adhering to the principle of "enduring hardship but never lowering oneself," Song bears a more open mind in dealing with clients as his career enters its 10th year. Better skills enable him to finish one piece precisely within 15 minutes; he has painted more than 20 people in a day and the price per portrait is now 10 yuan ($1.4) higher for black-and-white and color portraits.

As night fell, Song put on his jacket and turned on the lights near his easel.

"It [Song's self-portrait] is very lifelike," a visitor said, standing in front of the easel.

"Come on! Have your portrait done, just a couple of minutes," Song replied with a smile.

The visitor smiled, taking a seat opposite Song.

"Okay. Now, eyes on my hand. Please turn your face to the right, and don't move," Song instructed.

After studying the visitor for a little while, Song took out a pencil from a shabby pencil case and started to paint on an A4 paper.