Building up rural rejuvenation

For instance, in Fujian province's Minqing county, a local nonprofit is using the station to give classes and run workshops where villagers can learn planting and breeding techniques, ideas for promoting agricultural products and knowledge related to e-commerce. Training sessions for cultivating entrepreneurs in rural places are also offered at the station.

"The station can bring nearby villages more development opportunities. It's not a temporary project but a lasting one that will benefit villages in the next two decades or even longer," says Zhang, adding that it was the desire to carry out projects with "long-term impact" on rural development that motivated them to set up the stations.

Cheng Zhengyu, another initiator of the project, says they used to organize teams to visit remote villages during holidays to help local people renovate old houses.

"We typically only visited each destination once," he says.

"We didn't know if our renovation plans were actually working. However, after the stations were set up, we could forge long-term connections with the villages, making sure our efforts brought positive changes."

The architecture school at Tsinghua has integrated the revitalization project into its curriculum.

"Students are required to design the stations' buildings in class and implement the plans when they visit villages during holidays, which gives them a precious opportunity to build a structure from scratch in their university years," says Cheng.

He previously studied architecture at Tsinghua and is now a doctoral candidate at the university's School of Marxism.

The teachers and students in the project discuss construction with local officials and conduct surveys in villages to gather information before designing the stations.

"Local conditions are taken into consideration when designing the buildings," says Cheng.

For example, a station featuring a cultural museum is being established in Nanjing city's Gaochun district, which boasts cultural heritage like ceramics. In Wendeng district of Shandong province's Weihai city, which aims to facilitate the development of architecture and design, the station's structures have been given an artistic, modern touch, attracting many designers to visit.