Before dawn

It’s 04:00 in central Taiwan and everything is black. The city of Taichung’s 2.8 million residents are asleep, its flashing neon signs are off and the only movement cutting through the night is the silhouette of a 96-year-old man slowly painting alone in the darkness.

Every morning, Huang Yung-fu flips on a light, shuffles out of his two-room bungalow in sandals and carries a handful of paint tins into the streets outside. While the city around him sleeps, Huang crouches on a stool for three hours and quietly decorates the drab cement walls, pavement and windows with an explosion of playful murals in kaleidoscopic colours.

What began years ago with a single hand-painted bird on Huang’s bedroom wall has since grown into tens of thousands of illustrations. Today, this whimsical world of cartoon-like people, abstract animals and surrealist art is splashed across every centimetre of concrete in this former military settlement – called Rainbow Village. And 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’.