Villagers turn revitalized vacant houses into tourist sites in E China's Zhejiang

By renovating their vacant houses and embracing tourism, villagers from Shaoxing city, east China's Zhejiang province have revitalized abandoned houses and expanded their income channels.

Photo shows a village in Yuecheng district, Shaoxing, east China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

Anqiaotou village of Yuecheng district, Shaoxing is the place where the former residence for the grandmother of the famous Chinese writer Lu Xun is located. There, a house with white walls and gray rooftops, which previously served as a storage room, has been turned into a café bar. The bar has become a must-go site for tourists since it opened for business two months ago.

Anqiaotou is one of the first 13 villages in Shaoxing to have taken part in the rural house renovation project that kicked off at the beginning of the year. Today, the vacant houses have taken on new functions, having been transformed into a tourist service center, a cultural center, and other buildings. Furthermore, the village has rented vacant houses covering more than 3,000 square meters from villagers and turned them into a workshop for cultural and creative products and guest houses.

Photo shows a village in Yuecheng district, Shaoxing, east China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

"We want to help the village build a rural tourism brand themed on nostalgia," said Yang Santao, head of the project's operations team from a third-party company based in Shanghai.

Houses in Potang village, Yuecheng district have been given an artistic touch, being turned into a café, a workshop for an oil painter, and a workshop for an artist specialized in Lianhualao, a kind of local ballad performance art, among other venues. The village leased the houses at prices ranging from 70 yuan to 80 yuan per square meter per year, paying the owners of the houses installments over a period of 15 years.

Furthermore, thanks to a program under which farmers in the Yuecheng district can retain contract rights but transfer management rights for financial services, two of the farmers have opted to apply to mortgage off their houses to banks in exchange for the fees.