Mountainous village revives under Xi's ecological guidance

This aerial photo taken on April 13, 2023 shows Yucun Village of Anji County, Huzhou City, east China's Zhejiang Province. (Xinhua/Weng Xinyang)

HANGZHOU, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- It is midsummer and the picturesque Yucun Village in east China's Zhejiang Province, featuring mountains covered in lush green bamboo, has drawn visitors from various parts of the country.

Booming tourism in the village of Anji County has delivered tangible benefits to the locals. "Last year, we received nearly 50,000 visitors. In the first half of this year, the number of visitors has increased by about 30 percent compared to the same period last year," said Pan Chunlin, a homestay owner.

During an inspection tour to Yucun on August 15, 2005, Xi Jinping, then secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, for the first time put forward the concept of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," which is the pillar of President Xi's thought on ecological civilization.

In June, China's top legislature designated Aug. 15 as National Ecology Day, aiming to enhance public awareness and actions to protect the ecological environment.

Revisiting the small village offered an insight into how the concept came into being and how it has become a guiding principle for China's ecological development.

GROWING PAINS

Summer is a very busy time, with buses transporting visitors to Yucun, located at the foot of a mountain in northern Zhejiang, for sightseeing tours on a daily basis.

These bustling scenes reminded 62-year-old villager Ge Yuande of life decades ago, when the village roads were full of tractors loaded with ores.

During the 1990s, Anji went through a period of breakneck economic development, which was pursued at all costs.

In Yucun village, Anji's largest limestone mining area, villagers enriched themselves by processing limestone into bricks and cement, and the annual income of the village once exceeded 3 million yuan (about 414,400 U.S. dollars).

However, the mining industry took a heavy toll on the environment. The mountains turned bare, the water was polluted, and thousand-year-old ginkgo trees ceased to bear fruit.

"During that time, sewage flowed through the village, which was enveloped in smoke and dust throughout the year," said Ge, who worked as a miner. "Villagers always kept their windows shut and had no place to dry their laundry."

The challenges faced by Yucun also troubled Zhejiang at large. From the late 1970s to the early 2000s, Zhejiang's economy maintained an average annual growth rate of up to 13 percent, but this growth inflicted a heavy cost on the environment. There was a shortage of clean water, soil was severely polluted, and red tides frequently occurred near the coast.

With the painful lessons of environmental disasters in some Western countries in mind, policymakers in Zhejiang began to grapple with the conflict between protecting the ecological environment and accelerating economic growth.

PURSUING GREEN DEVELOPMENT

In June 2003, Zhejiang initiated a province-wide rural green revival program to improve both the eco-environment of villages and rural residents' quality of life.

In a last-ditch attempt to save the deteriorating environment, officials in Yucun shut down the mining industry and cement factories. However, the move prompted an immediate decline in the village economy and locals' incomes.

Tang Zhongxiang, then head of the Anji county government, said the county, at the crossroads of development, was uncertain about its future growth path.

"On one hand, locals did realize that they could no longer sacrifice the environment and their own health in exchange for so-called wealth, but on the other hand, they were skeptical about whether lucid waters and lush mountains could bring them fortune," Tang said.

In August 2005, Xi visited Yucun. "It is a brilliant move for you to shut down the mines," he said during the visit.

"We used to say that we wanted both lucid waters and lush mountains, as well as mountains of gold and silver. In fact, lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of gold and silver," he added.

After the visit, Xi expounded the concept in a newspaper article. "We need to choose the right direction and create conditions to continuously turn lucid waters and lush mountains into mountains of gold and silver," he wrote.

Qian Kunfang, then Party chief of Anji, said Xi's emphasis on environmental protection had offered great encouragement for local officials to continue to pursue green development.

PUTTING CONCEPT INTO PRACTICE

"When people in Yucun were still nostalgic about its booming mining days and uncertain about its future, Xi's concept served as guidance for the development of the village," said Yu Xiaoping, deputy Party chief of Yucun.

However, it took some villagers in Yucun some time before they fully grasped the essence of Xi's concept of environmental protection.

In 2005, Pan, who used to be a tractor driver in the mining industry, started the homestay business, the first of its kind in Yucun. Meanwhile, some villagers, who doubted that tourism would work, launched small workshops to make bamboo products.

Initially, the bamboo business prospered, with one workshop generating an annual revenue of about 200,000 to 300,000 yuan, while the homestay business was overshadowed.

However, as the local environment improved, visitors began to pour into the picturesque village, helping tourism to soar. "Tourism began to get better in 2006. I made 300,000 yuan that year," said Pan.

Facing crackdowns on pollution and heavy fines for safety incidents, many owners of bamboo workshops found it increasingly hard to continue their business. They began switching to tourism, running homestays and organizing fruit-picking and canoe tours.

"Rome wasn't built in a day, and so it was for Yucun," said Yu, explaining that after villagers saw for themselves the contrast between the two development models, they fully understood Xi's concept and made the right choice.

Today, Yucun has become a popular and well-known scenic spot. The site of the demolished cement factory has been transformed into a plantation and a large piece of land has turned into rapeseed fields and lotus ponds. New forms of business, such as camping bases and cultural and creative industrial parks, have also been introduced into the village.

"In recent years, more and more young people returned to the village to work or start their own businesses. My son returned to the village after graduation and now runs a homestay," Ge said. "The environment here is beautiful and my family is living a happy life. This is the life I want."

In 2021, Yucun was named one of the "Best Tourism Villages" by the United Nations World Tourism Organization. In 2022, the collective income of Yucun reached 13 million yuan. It is expected to reach 15 million yuan this year.

Over the past 18 years, the changes in Yucun have vividly demonstrated the great value of Xi's ecological concept. The idea that originated from this small village has spread across China, and generated a broad and strong international resonance.

The United Nations Environment Programme decided to promote China's philosophy of ecological progress in February 2013 and in 2016 released a report on China's strategies and practices in this field.