Young people return

A bird's-eye view of Yangjiatang village. [Photo by Yan Yiqi / China Daily]

The change is about to be made in Pingtian. Jiang Binlong, general manager of the local development project, said that reconstruction work has lured about 30 young people to return to the village to live and work. The move has raised their standards of living. Their average earnings in the city used to be 2,000 to 3,000 yuan a month, but now they can earn 150 yuan a day, so their monthly income is now about 4,500 yuan.

Further down the line, the villagers expect to earn a living by running guesthouses and providing other tourist-related services.

Two refurbished buildings that will serve as guesthouses and offer 10 rooms costing 380 to 580 yuan a night are scheduled to open in early May. The original structures have been retained, but more glass has been added to admit as much light as possible. By the end of May, the village will boast a further six hotels and a hostel.

In addition to Luo's team, Songyang is also playing host to four other groups of architectural experts working on the reconstruction project.

Pingtian has attracted teams - from Tsinghua University, the China Central Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Hong Kong - that are working to transform the ancient settlement into a tourist village. By the end of May, Pingtian will have eight more guesthouses and a hostel.

Jiang said the local tourist activities will focus on agriculture. "There will be a tea-picking workshop and land for tourists to plant their own vegetables," he said.

Although far from fully developed, Songyang earned 811 million yuan from the 1.88 million tourists who visited the county last year.

Despite that success, Wang is hopeful that tourist numbers can be kept to manageable levels. He said he has seen the results of the overexploitation of traditional towns and villages where commercial activities have become dominant and the places have lost their original characteristics.

"I don't want to see buses full of tourists coming to our villages, because we don't have the capacity to handle large numbers of people. Instead, we should provide the villages with a stimulus and allow them to develop quietly," he said.

Contact the writer at [email protected]