Xiong Qinghua's oil painting work. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"They are really practical. They play mahjong day and night and compare children's incomes."

He depicts villagers' worship of money and indulgence in gambling and alcohol drinking in slack season, by which he yearns for the simple, honest character of people in the past.

“He paints his land on which he is an observer and constructor," Chen Min who authors Xiong's biography A Wild Potato says in the preface.

"His home village is economically depressed and culturally conservative, it is a place not at all uncommon. But with his surrealistic approach, Xiong unfolds the magical, profound realities (of the countryside)."