93-year-old's murals save Taiwan's 'Rainbow Village'

This photo taken on August 19, 2015 shows tourists in costume posing for a photo next to artwork by artist Huang Yung-fu, while visiting the Rainbow Village in the Nantun district of Taiwan's central Taichung. [Photo/CFP]

When the decades-old settlement in the Nantun district of Taichung city in Southeast China's Taiwan was set to be demolished, the 93-year-old former soldier Huang Yung-fu embarked on a project to cover the walls of the small village with colorful figures, from birds and animals to celebrity singers and sportsmen, in order to save it.

When local university students discovered Huang's murals, they launched a campaign to save the village and four years ago the authorities agreed it should be preserved. Now one of the area's leading tourist attractions, it is known as "Rainbow Village" and pulls in more than a million visitors annually, mostly from Asia. Huang Yung-fu has been nicknamed the 'Rainbow Grandpa'.