GUANGZHOU, Dec. 28 -- At lunch break, pupils in Boshe, a small coastal village in south China's Guangdong Province, rush out of the school, laughing and chasing each other, just like in any other small town.

Once dubbed "No.1 Meth Village," the fragrance of burning incense has replaced the rank odor of cooking meth and children's laughter fills every corner of a village whose creepy atmosphere used to intimidate even the police. For the great majority of villagers, memories of the bad old days remain starkly vivid.

Boshe is in Lufeng County, a hotbed for production and trade of drugs. Over a third of crystal meth consumed in China once came from Boshe and other villages in the area, according to Deng Jianwei, head of Guangdong Narcotics Control Bureau. Deng told us that more than one in five households in Boshe were directly involved in drug production.

On Dec. 29, 2013, in the pitch dark, more than 3,000 armed police, with helicopters and speedboats, stormed Boshe, arresting 182 people, closing 77 drug labs and seizing nearly three tonnes of crystal meth. Drug production in Boshe ceased.

Before the operation, Boshe had been a fortress, off limits to police, with villagers besieging officers who dared to venture into its cramped streets with dozens of motorcycles, recalled Wu Muqiang, police chief of nearby Jiaxi township with jurisdiction over Boshe.

"Now, 120 officers are stationed in Jiaxi, patrolling villages like Boshe that used to be no-go areas, every day and night," said Wu.

NEVER FORGETTING, NEVER GOING BACK

Two years have past. Many things have changed, while some remain the same.

Boshe has been gradually transformed from a narco-town back to an ordinary village, tranquil and law-abiding. At noon, mothers with babies in arms stand on street corners in twos or threes, gossiping and enjoying the winter sunshine, just like thousands of other villages in China. Brand new metal doorplates nailed on the old walls of houses are shining.

"Before 2014, to confuse the police no one used doorplates. But now, villagers even leave their doors during the day, ready for inspections at any time," said Cai Longqiu, Boshe Communist Party of China chief.

The lavish houses built by the drug barons -- some unfinished, others dilapidated -- remain scattered around the village, the strongest reminder to villagers living there now, warning them never to forget what their village has been through.

Earlier this month, Lin Yan and her family returned to Boshe from nearby Foshan City in anticipation of celebrating New Year and Spring Festival. Lin has done business in Foshan for years.

"The village is completely different now," she said, but refused to talk much about the village before the clean-up, as if the topic has been declared off limits.

In this traditional village where people are related by blood or have known each other for most of their lives, it is understandable that many feel uncomfortable when the topic of drugs arises. So many families were involved; everyone knows someone now in prison or worse.

GET CLEAN, STAY CLEAN

With the demise of the meth trade, Boshe has returned to agricultural to make money. Surrounded by barren hills and mudflats, locals are left with little scope for development, and it is easy to see how the drug trade gained its first foothold in the settlement.

"Our poor economy was the main reason that the drug trade was such a tempting prospect for people here. And the problem of drugs won't be solved until the area catches up with the surrounding region," said Yang Xusong, mayor of Shanwei City that administers Lufeng.

According to Yang, Lufeng's GDP per capita last year was a third of national average and a fourth of the figure for Guangdong. Since the raid in 2013, over 20 million yuan (3.1 million U.S. dollars) has been spent on improving infrastructure in Boshe mostly to help with fishing and small-scale farming.

More than 1,300 hectares of mudflats, once covered in meth shacks, have been developed for aquaculture and irrigation channels have been restored for lychee orchards. The environment of the village has pretty much been cleaned up after the toll taken by years of drug production.

"Villagers have been gradually found their way onto the right track, and are all too aware of the dangers of drugs," said Yang.