The idea is to hold an art event that benefits young, struggling mainland painters, as well as helping labourers who rarely get to see such art. The 15 finalists, who all received cash prizes, will have their works permanently displayed in the factory after the exhibition closes. Organisers hope more works will be added each year as the competition continues and believe there should be enough to furnish not just the lobby, but also the canteen and living quarters of the hundreds of migrant workers who live on the grounds.

The 60 works are a bit on the safe side - nothing overtly political, sexual or religious. But the exhibition still covers a wide variety of styles, from pure abstraction to hyper-realism, and rivals some of Hong Kong's SoHo shows in terms of range and quality. The panel of judges, including Hong Kong architect James Kinoshita and Cliff Einstein of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, give it a sense of legitimacy. And the 165,000 yuan purse, donated by Lee, makes it a big deal in a country where the minimum wage is 450 yuan a month. Carsan's workers, who are paid above the industry standard, make from 800-1,500 yuan.

'I have three goals in setting up this art competition,' says Lee on the two-hour boat ride from the Tsim Sha Tsui ferry pier to Shunde. 'First, I wanted to help young, emerging Chinese artists, most of whom do not have enough money to work. Some even have to sell bread on the side to make a living. There is no need to help well-established older artists who are selling well in Hong Kong or New York,' says the Hong Kong businesswoman and art collector.

'Secondly, I wanted to improve the work environment for my workers. Only bankers and professionals benefit from having interesting original art in the workplace, usually in boardrooms. Why can't factory workers have art in their workplace, too? Why must they be denied?

'Finally, I wanted to set an example in China. My overseas clients give money to charities or art foundations, but this is not happening yet in China. The western management style includes caring for the worker's entire wellbeing as well as being involved in the community. I want to share in their vision.'

Lee says the project, curated by the nearby Foshan People's Museum, took more than six months to organise, especially with art being sourced from as far away as northern Heilongjiang province. 'The idea of a privately funded art competition was so foreign that, at first, we had difficulty getting artists to believe we were legitimate,' she says. 'The artists thought, 'Some factory wants my oil painting? No way'. So we had to get professionals with credentials from art schools and museums to help us.'

Appropriately for such a pioneering event, the awards ceremony and celebratory meals held earlier this month were also something of a social experiment. It may have been the first time Hermes-toting tai-tais, migrant factory workers, overseas businessmen, students from far-flung provinces and local government authorities had mingled.

The Hong Kong contingent, travelling with Gucci suits and bottles of 1989 Margaux, arrive at the event with representatives from three banks, industrialists from Australia and America, Kinoshita and his son, Andrew, the Harvard graduate who designed the Carsan factory. They spend a lot of time talking business, looking at the art and chatting with artists about prices and futures commissions.

Then there are the dozen or so factory workers who, though sitting nearby, could be a million miles away. Still in their blue uniforms, they talk happily among themselves about the art, but flee at the sight of the English-speaking suits, the cameraman from local Shunde TV and the scary Post reporter.

When asked which pieces they like the best, they protest that they are uneducated in art and should not be quoted. When pressed that one doesn't need an art school degree to have likes and dislikes, a Mr So finally stands up and looks around. He says he recognises the mountains, since he, like 21-year-old artist Guo Hongwei, is from the highlands of Sichuan province.

As for his favourite, he points to Morning, Noon & Evening, a brightly coloured triptych of three dreamy Marc Chagall-like village scenes. 'Very pretty,' he says, before a colleague asks if he was talking about the painting or 19-year-old Qiao Ming from Shanxi province standing beside it. 'Her painting is pretty like her,' he says, before quickly sitting down again.

'We've never seen paintings like these before,' says Mr Liu from Carsan's administration department. 'And even though we might not understand them, we hopefully will with time. I like the big mountains, because they are more like a Chinese painting.' He also points to Unsafe Building Awaiting Demolition, by local Shunde high school teacher Zhong Changchun. 'I like the picture of the house to be torn down, because it shows that sometimes money and modernisation can have ill effects.'

'I don't want to choose the very traditional paintings,' says finance and administration director Feather Fok. 'But if it's too abstract, then I might not understand it.' She chooses Liu Shuguang's rather bleak painting of a snow-covered dirt road in Tibet. 'I don't find it bleak at all,' she says. 'For me, I see it as the road forward. I come to work every day and that picture makes me think of where the road of life will lead for me.'

Liu adds that tiny tree in the background 'symbolises our goals in life, something far in the distance, but always within sight'. He is one of nine artists, aged 19 to 35, who have come to Shunde for this event, travelling from Beijing, Shanghai and Xian, and from smaller communities in the provinces of Guangzhou, Shanxi and Sichuan. Given the prohibitive price of air travel, they are excited by this rare chance to meet with artists from other regions, and the free transportation and accommodation provided by Lee. Whether at the factory, or over endless cigarettes and bottles of Great Wall red wine at dinner, there's a flurry of photo-taking, card-exchanging, and pouring over each other's portfolios.

Holding a plastic folder of works in her lap, 26-year-old Beijing art student Cheng Zhongqi, nicknamed Qi Qi, explains how her 2002 nude self-portraits are more western, and how her subtler, monochromatic 2004 nudes are more Chinese. 'In my old paintings, the basic structure is very square and western, whereas the movement of Chinese works is rounded, more like a swirl than a grid,' she says. 'This portrait of three women looks like they're emerging from a cloud, and there's something underneath that you can not quite see. And isn't that how people are?'

Mai Shiwei, a 33-year-old Guangzhou-based artist with an exceptional way of portraying sunlight, nods in agreement. 'If an oil painting is too realistic, too perfect like a photograph, it ceases to feel real,' he says. He points to the thick layers of paint on his works, all depicting ancient Chinese temples. 'The physical depth and the heavy, thick texture of my paintings reflect the depth and weight of history. My goal is not to capture just Chinese history, but the weight of world history. I can spend hours sitting around temples until I feel I've found the right place to paint.'

The conversation bounces from painting techniques to new art trends, to the works at hand. Would 25-year-old Wang Dong's portrait of the girl with the pink shoes be called 'bopu', the new Putonghua term for 'pop art'? And, if so, is it more David Hockney bopu or Andy Warhol bopu? Of the contemporary Chinese artists who have found fame and fortune in New York, who's better, Wenda Gu or Xu Bing?

The art talk stops as music is piped-in, marking the beginning of the ceremony. Guests are shown to bright, pink-covered chairs and listen to many speeches, an address from a local official about 'glorious China' and a short, sweet performance by the factory's resident chorus. The winners are announced backwards, beauty pageant-style: nine honourable mentions get 5,000 yuan, three third-place winners get 10,000 yuan and two second-place winners get 20,000 yuan.

The 50,000-yuan first prize goes to Guo, which is little surprise. At 370cm x 200cm, his gold-hued mountain landscape is the largest and most prominent piece in the room, and the one with the broadest appeal. It also perfectly follows the event's east-meets-west theme: the painting is a distinctly Asian landscape with oils, a traditional western medium, while somehow achieving some of a Chinese watercolour's sense of lightness and flow. 'I painted the rocks so that they are translucent and merge with the mist,' he says. 'I did the mountains and trees in muted colours, to create a sense of the abstract. It alludes to conventional Chinese ink painting, and in this way it is poetic.'

Guo, who was raised in Chengdu, Sichuan, by artist parents, has always been interested in art and started studying oil painting when he was 17. When asked what he'll do with the money, he says: 'I just want to spend it on my art. I don't want any other job than to be an artist.' As for the future, he is waiting to see if he will be accepted into the Central Fine Arts College in Beijing, or a German art school that has an exchange programme with the Sichuan Fine Arts College, where he will graduate next month. In preparation for leaving Sichuan and in boosting his school applications, Guo has been learning English. 'I mostly taught myself,' he says.

After the ceremony everyone - artists, judges, officials, bankers, even the workers' chorus - are bussed to a nearby golf club and fed yet another huge meal of Shunde specialities such as freshwater fish, scallion-fried ho-fan noodles and buffalo milk desserts. And, with that, this unlikely art event comes to an end. The suits and Hermes bags head back to Hong Kong and the artists take various trains and flights home, snapping pictures all the way. 'If only all the factories in China could have art competitions,' says Rao Songqing, who painted a windswept Tibetan highway. 'Wouldn't that be something?'

For workers' representative Lao Jing, the art competition was just one of the many things that set Carsan apart. He says that 'overseas management' - one presumes he means from Hong Kong - has given them dorm rooms with balconies, basketball courts, Saturday night film screenings and a library that is now acquiring art books.

'These paintings have opened our eyes to something new,' he says. 'Oil painting is a western medium, and we are run by modern management that cares about the living standards of its workers, originally a western concept. They understand that, as our living standards rise, so do our cultural needs. It makes us encouraged to think and to learn more about the outside world.'