Construction of the hall has been like finding a missing link, allowing the village to maintain its integrity, says Xu Tiantian, who designed the memorial hall.

The Beijing architect has designed 20 public buildings, including museums, a bridge, a theater and factories, in various parts of Songyang.

Rural development has gained ever growing support from the central government since President Xi Jinping listed rural vitalization as a priority on the government's top agenda at the 19th CPC National Congress last year.

Architects such as Xu see it as a good opportunity to take part in social change by changing the way they do things.

Rural architecture need not be eye-catching, she says. The important thing is that it changes people's lives.

A factory in the village of Xing that makes brown sugar, and which Xu designed, has drawn many plaudits for her from locals. When the factory opened in 2016 people replaced tea trees with sugar cane to produce brown sugar, a traditional skill passed on for generations. For villagers, brown sugar has supplanted tea as the main source of income because of brown sugar's rising price.

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