Villagers in Hebei make moves to enjoy better lifestyle

SHIJIAZHUANG — In 2019, Gao Yun was relocated out of a largely empty village in the city of Zhangjiakou in North China's Hebei province, and his quality of life has since improved significantly.

When Gao left Xiangxinggou village in Zhangjiakou's Zhangbei county, only fewer than 20 families were still living there, and 70 percent of the village houses were not in use.

Today he lives in a two-story house in a new community, which was jointly developed by Xiangxinggou and the neighboring village of Houdayingtan for relocated households.

Life now is quite comfortable, Gao says. "I gave up an adobe house and in exchange, I got a modern home. Instead of the dirt road in the old village, now we have concrete roads. I no longer need to leave the house to take a bath or go to the toilet, and there is central heating for winter."

Xiangxinggou is one of more than 1,000 "hollow" villages across Zhangjiakou that have undergone a transformation in the past five years or so.

Over the years, Zhangjiakou, a city with bitter cold winters, has seen a large number of young people move out to seek employment elsewhere, leaving many villages gradually hollowed out.

Of the city's over 4,170 administrative villages, 924 reported more than 50 percent of their rural residences unused, while 169 others reported 30 to 50 percent unused, according to official data.

Much of the land in these sparsely populated villages had been left idle, and people were plagued by poor public services.

Since 2017, Zhangjiakou has begun to give these "hollow" villages a shake-up, either by relocating the remaining residents or renovating the villages.

The wishes of the villagers have been fully respected during the process, says Li Pengju, Party chief of Zhangbei county. "Whether to move, how to move and where to move — it was their call."

Shuiquan village was one of the villages that chose renovation over relocation.

Following the demolition of dilapidated houses and the removal of debris, the formerly run-down village, with a history of more than 800 years, has been transformed into a model of rural tourism.

Zhangjiakou has so far built 155 new communities for relocated villagers, housing 135,000 people. The city has also established many supporting facilities, including kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, hospitals, service centers and elderly care institutions.

One of the communities, located near Zhangbei's downtown area, has provided a new home to more than 16,000 people from 80 administrative villages.

Meanwhile, the city has made the reemployment of relocated villagers an integral part of the transformation program, and built more than 110 industrial parks near the new communities.

These industrial parks accommodate a vast array of businesses, such as garment manufacturing and agricultural product processing, and continue to generate employment opportunities as they expand.

A total of 26 clothes processing and agricultural products projects in Zhangbei county, for example, have created more than 6,800 jobs, and 24 plantations, breeding gardens and photovoltaic industrial parks in Guyuan county have employed over 1,000 people.

Wang Jinrong and his wife are now packers at a quinoa-processing plant in one of Guyuan's industrial parks.

Before moving into a new community near the plant, they engaged in the cultivation of "naked" oats in a 0.8 hectare field in Guyuan's Xinhua village and struggled financially. Now the couple can jointly earn nearly 6,000 yuan ($859.48) every month.

Wang says that a majority of the factory workers were relocated to the community from nearby villages.

Xinhua