“renaissance” of the “rotten river beach”-人生就是博官网

although night has fallen, tantou village of lyutan town, wuyi county, zhejiang province is still full of people. at the entrance to the village, a water curtain film was playing with the night sky lit up by a huge 3d panoramic light show, attracting the eyes of a steady stream of villagers and tourists.

shao yangwu, a local villager, had just finished the busy day working in his own homestay. after strolling around the lake to enjoy the light show, he and his wife went to the ancient residential area to visit the wetland photography exhibition and print exhibition held there. it was not until late that they returned home, satisfied.

shao yangwu is 54 years old. he left home when young to seek jobs; he once worked as a driver and later opened a small restaurant. he decided to return to open a homestay when he saw the tourism boom in his hometown in recent years. with more and more people coming to the village, his business is getting brisk. and soon he added 4 more rooms to the original 4, but still couldn’t accommodate the needs. he now earns about 200,000 yuan a year, and it is both easier and more stable than any of his old jobs before.

being able to find good jobs at doorstep made more and more villagers return, like shao did. in the past five years, the collective operational income of tantou village increased from 50,000 yuan per year to more than 900,000 yuan. being the host of dozens of folk poetry events and painting exhibitions, as well as such major festival events as the national fairy tale competition and zhejiang ecological games, tantou village receives nearly 200,000 tourists every year.

enjoying today’s prosperity, the villagers still remembered vividly what it was like five or six years ago—the difference can only be described as unbelievable.

located at the junction of wuyi river and bailu creek, tantou village used to be the water transportation hub from wuyi to jinhua, zhejiang province. later, it gradually declined with the rise of land transportation. since the 1990s, the village collective has made many attempts to revive itself: raising silkworms, cultivating melons and peaches, and starting sand mining plants. instead of making money, sand-digging exacerbated the ecological problem of the village.

“people used to call us the ‘garbage village’, because more than 400,000 ㎡ of our wetland were soaked in sewage, and 20-odd ancient buildings with a history of 800 years were also on the verge of collapsing. our villagers left one by one for other places to seek livelihood.” said lin weiliang, secretary of the party branch of tantou village.

where is the way out? since the 18th national congress of the communist party of china, cities and areas of zhejiang have been strengthening ecological conservation, helping boost the development of tourism and facilitating coordinated development of urban and rural areas by protecting local traditional villages and natural environment. this has brought about a development opportunity unseen before to the village which is no more than ten minutes away from the county town and expressway exit.

“seizing the opportunity of building villages characterized by sound living environment and unique cultural appeal and ecological corridors, we have so far built a wetland park of more than 400,000 ㎡, restored an ancient street of 1,000 meters, repaired 6,000 ㎡ of ancient buildings, and completed a number of major projects such as installing sewage pipelines, strong- and weak-current lines engineering, and renovation of facade, etc.” enumerated lin. years of hard work saw the village  undergo a sweeping change—the once rotten river beach had become a wetland park that is the proud of the villagers today. hundreds of egrets returned, attracting countless photographers every summer.

thanks to the convenient transportation and sound environment, tantou village also attracted the eyes of urban people. taking advantage of the situation, the village decided to introduce investment to help boost the development and upgrading of tourism. thus the village collective took the lead to rent the renovated ancient buildings.

“the village boasts not only the ‘hardware advantages’ of transportation and ancient buildings, but also the ‘software ones’ of doing business such as valuing culture, an open and inclusive atmosphere, that is why it eventually became the ‘lounge of cultural exchange’, so to speak.” said xu xiaobing, an entrepreneur from lanxi, zhejiang and also one of the first to make an investment in the village. in 2018, he invested a total of eight million yuan to build the tianlu cultural and creative industry park which drew various grass-roots organizations such as folk art museums, ancient book and print studio, etc.

seeing the success of tianlu park, entrepreneurs who were also optimistic about the future of tantou village vied to come and do business.

wang tengfei from yongkang came and set up a leisure products company to provide tourists with camping equipment and related services. chen lufeng, who has been doing business in xishuangbanna for many years, rented two houses from the local and turned them into a teahouses featuring pu’er tea from yiwu, yunnan. at present, a total of 11 enterprises have come and settled in the village.

tapping into the power of culture, tianlu cultural and creative industry park frequently holds photography exhibitions, book fairs and other activities, turning the village into a gathering place for scholars and artists. not only did xu make money from his investment, he is also elected member of the village committee by a high vote in the latest election, a rare privilege, no doubt, for someone who isn’t a local. the trust the villagers put in him gave him a sense of belonging as if he were among his family.

that being said, villages with prospects of success was not built in one day. wuyi county of zhejiang province is located in a mountainous area and was once one of the eight poverty-stricken counties of the province. in rural areas, development are often sluggish and foundation weak. to address this, the government of wuyi, believing in the philosophy of “one key fit only for one lock”, provided funds and contacts, and encouraged each village to explore its own path of development in light of its specific conditions and reality, arriving eventually at the “ten ways to empower villages”, such as redistributing idle or inefficient land through comprehensive planning for intensive and large-scale leasing economy, development by way of introducing enterprises, and making good use of existing resources that had been left idle.

lin believed that the recipe of common prosperity of tantou village lies in making good use of existing resources that had been overlooked in a comprehensive manner. “attract visitors by leveraging the influence of internet and make profit out of the bea.jpgul scenery. since last year, the village has made yet another holistic arrangement of such resources as mountains, rivers, forests, fields and houses for rent. also, an economic cooperative was established to give shares to each household, turning resources into assets, funds into shares, and farmers into shareholders for common prosperity.”

tantou village is not alone in making the remarkable achievement; all the 258 administrative villages under wuyi county have realized an operational income of more than 100,000 yuan and a total income of more than 200,000 this year.

among the mountains, success stories like this of the “rotten river beach” are constantly repeated.

（writing/photograph/script/video sooting: tao xuanzhong, li zengwei, ye fei, jin wujian）