From Barren to Blossoming

He Ran remembers how hard life was in Hejiayan, a remote village in megacity Chongqing in southwestern China where she grew up. Located in the Wuling Mountain range, the region was full of cliffs, caves, and ancient stilt houses of the Tujia ethnic group. Even in the 1990s, it lacked modern sanitation and hard roads. When it rained, which was frequent, the gravel roads turned slushy, making transport difficult, if not impossible.

Due to the COVID-19, He lost her job and left for Chongqing. But on her return in 2021, a pleasant surprise awaited her. The old village had been transformed. The ramshackle houses had been repaired and the roads improved. The houses that had been lying empty have been turned into bustling businesses.

The change is due to a drive to revitalize the village that had been a prime rice grower for the imperial palace in the past. Besides renovation and infrastructure development, rural industries are being developed to bring more benefits of modernization and development dividends to local villagers.

He Ran decided to join the drive for common prosperity. She found an idle farmhouse and persuaded its owner to turn it into a cafe with him. Besides generating an income, the café also contributes to green agriculture. The coffee grounds produced daily are used to make organic fertilizer.

Villagers have also started homestays to draw visitors. Today, Hejiayan is a judicious balance between its past legacy and modernization. The stilt houses are still there for visitors to admire, but the roads that lead to them are now flagged. There are modern cafés, an unmanned supermarket, and a library.

Circular Agriculture

Dahan is another village in the region which has a higher terrain, with an average altitude of over 1,000 meters. Due to its remote location and lack of livelihood opportunities in the past, most of the young villagers left to work in cities, leaving the farmland in the village lying idle as a result.

In 2021, as part of the rural revitalization drive, the village was paired with Dongying, home to China’s second-largest oilfield – Shengli Oilfield in Shandong Province to help grow its economy. With financial and technical support from the mentor city, Dahan began to develop circular agriculture. Its specialty is rice-crab eco-agriculture in which crabs are commensally grown in rice fields, providing farmers an additional source of income.

Dahan uses an operation model of developing rural collective economic organizations plus enterprises with farmers’ participation. Land transfers are encouraged to utilize idle land or collective farming while joint ventures and startups are generating new jobs for villagers.

Yang Changxue, a villager in his 70s, said he and his wife rent out their land to the village collective. Besides the rent, they receive an annual dividend of RMB 30,000 (US $4,138), which is their share of the profit the collective makes, another example of common prosperity.

“In the past, my children helped out with the expenses, but today, I earn money on my doorstep,” a beaming Yang said.

“We have a good ecology and good water, and the soil is rich in selenium,” added Peng Shibing, head of the Lütang rice-crab breeding base in the village. Selenium is a nonmetallic element suitable for rice-crab farming. To ensure the quality of the hairy crabs and organic black rice, local farmers do not use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. “Our hairy crabs grow in mountain spring water and the meat is firm and sweet,” Peng said.

Peng started rice-crab farming in 2021. He also began multistory cropping – growing two or more crops in the same plot with different heights. Both are examples of green and efficient circular agriculture. Hairy crabs help eliminate pests in rice fields and their droppings provide natural fertilizer for the rice. Symbiotic species complement each other, benefit the ecology, and contribute to sustainable development.

The base harvested its first batch of hairy crabs in 2022, generating substantial income for the villagers and strengthening Peng’s confidence in circular agriculture.

Waste to Wealth

This is the third year since the Dieshi Flower Valley scenic spot opened to tourists. Located in the nearby villages of Zaying and Shanshuwan, this area was far from scenic in the past. The vegetation cover was less than 30 percent and more than 70 percent of the land comprised exposed rocks. There was scant arable land and an acute shortage of water, rendering it a complete wasteland.

Ran Ying, responsible for vegetation maintenance in the scenic spot, said in the past villagers could grow only a meager amount of corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes in the rocky decertified area.

The poor conditions made it impossible for the villages to develop, said Zhou Yongle, in charge of Dieshi Flower Valley. Improving the environment and restoring the ecology are important foundations for local economic development.

Things started to change from 2015, when the local authorities invested nearly RMB 80 million (US $11.1 million) to improve the soil, plant saplings, and bolster systematic irrigation. With the assistance of the Southwest University in Chong-qing and other professional teams, pink muhly grass, native to the North American prairie, was planted as it is drought-resistant. Today, the period from September to October is the most beautiful season in the scenic area, with grass covering more than 66 hectares.

More than 100 kinds of flowers and fruit trees such as the rhododendron, peach and plum grow in the scenic area, whose vegetation cover has risen to more than 60 percent. The vegetation is intertwined with stromatolites, “living fossil” layers composed of living microorganisms, creating a new attraction for visitors.

Ran’s work in the scenic area, nurturing the grass and trees, brings him a monthly income of over RMB 3,000 (US $414). “It’s easier work than farming, and it’s easier to earn money,” he grinned.

The ecology of the villages has improved, and the lives of local villagers have improved. Today’s Dieshi Flower Valley is continuing to take forward steps on the road to rural revitalization and green development.