'Rustic' feel of villages in Zhejiang is being revived

Two centuries ago, an idyllic view of a pristine plain fringed by wooded hills and clear creeks persuaded a passer-by to settle down in what is now Wuyantou village in Zhejiang province. The isolated expanse of land has since seen hundreds of stone cottages sprout up to form a settlement.

Twenty years ago, the once-bustling area of about 1.5 square kilometers had virtually died. Most residents moved to towns closer to urban areas, and only a few elderly people remained in the crumbling cottages.

"The whole area was desolate and hollow," said Yang Guiqing, director of the urban planning department at Tongji University, describing the scene as it was when he first visited in 2013.

However, Yang added, the ruins of teetering stone houses and rugged roads also carried a faint feeling of untouched countryside that those who moved away would cherish.

"That sweet dose of nostalgia will be lost if we demolish those old buildings and plug in prosaic city apartments," he said.

The Green Rural Revival program, launched in 2003 to restore the environment through management and recycling of water and waste, had targeted thousands of heavily polluted villages that were on the brink of extinction.

The program, according to Gu Yikang, former deputy head of the rural affairs authority in Zhejiang, carved a path of rural revitalization and laid a solid foundation for sustainable development in rural areas.

Riding the program's transformational wave, Yang led a team to conduct extensive research into historic settlements, such as the village of Wuyantou, across the province.

Zhejiang is home to 1,149 old villages and towns, mostly nestled in mountains and hills in the southern and central parts of the province.

"These old villages are either abandoned or cluttered with new urban-style construction," Yang said. "The rustic flavor is gone."

Yang started with the remodeling of an abandoned millet storage house, equipping the old building with modern infrastructure such as high-speed internet access, electricity and sewer systems, while retaining the vertical wood window decorations and the pebbled trails leading to the entrance.

"Nowadays, children read in books about the starry nights and lush greenery, but rarely do they see and touch nature in the urban jungle," Yang said. "The villages should be preserved in a way that allows younger generations to take a break from the hustle and bustle of modern cities."

In recent years, most of the outmoded cottages in the village have morphed into contemporary facilities based on their original stone structure. There's an art center, a museum of obsolete objects, a town meeting hall and a dozen hostels－all designed to stimulate tourism.

Zheng Xiangqun, a researcher at the Ministry of Agriculture's agricultural-environmental protection institute, said the villages in Zhejiang are setting a good example for how to customize restoration plans in accordance with local resources.

"I have visited a number of villages across China, and many have committed the mistake of copying and pasting models of other villages," he said. "It's crucial to take the local customs and historic legacies into consideration."