CHONGQING: Jiangjun Village, located in the green hills of Bishan District, in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, was once a dreary place during winter, plagued by poverty and a dwindling population. However, the winter scene is much brighter these days, thanks to an injection of tourism and artistic facilities that have given this little village a new lease of life.
Art galleries, museums, theaters and homestays can now be found nestling among the small cottages, while pigsties and cowsheds have been converted into western-style restaurants and teahouses.
In 2021, the local government, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and several other institutions established an artist rural construction pilot project centred on a dilapidated village courtyard called “Lotus Cave.” The project involved the building of 10 core art areas, aiming to integrate the new artistic facilities with the local living environment, village culture and local characteristics. When the project was first launched, Lotus Cave was very run down, consisting of a collection of residential buildings in a poor state of repair, many of them empty.
“The total population here is 151 people, but only 21 people live here permanently, and most of them are the elderly and left-behind children,” said Su Chenghong, the first secretary of the village Party committee. –Agencies
