"Baigongfang has been created to rescue the declining arts and crafts industry," said Zhu Hong, vice-president of the Beijing Arts and Crafts Association, which has organized over 50 enterprises from across the country to work together in this ambitious project.

Covering 4,000 square meters and with a total investment of nearly 200 million yuan (US$24 million), the workshops are arranged in the layout of a hutong, the lanes of Beijing's traditional residential areas. Each unit has a retail shop in front and a workshop in the back.

In a cloisonne workshop, five craftspeople are busy with their work around a big table. A woman is forming patterns on a roughcast copper vessel with thin strips of copper, and another filling the spaces between the completed copper-strip patterns of another vessel with thick enamel of different colors. Some colorful semi-finished articles are sitting on shelves ready for firing and polishing.

In the next unit, a craftsman puts the final touches to a lacquer painting in his workshop.

Baigongfang currently has gathered over 100 nationally or provincially renowned masters, who direct the work of about 400 apprentices in 17 workshops specializing in such handicrafts as jade and ivory carving, cloisonne, colored glazing and so on. The ultimate hope is to restore the glory of these superb traditional handicrafts, which are threatened with extinction, and to rejuvenate the industry, which has been on the wane because of the lack of qualified young successors.

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