SHIJIAZHUANG: Duan Jinghe was renovating his courtyard with some workers in Nanyu Village, Laishui County in north China’s Hebei Province.
Duan, 32, runs two guesthouses with a total of nine rooms, in Nanyu Village in the Taihang Mountains, which is just located at the border of Hebei and Beijing.
“Although it is the low season for tourism here now, we can take advantage of the time to improve the environment of my guesthouse,” Duan said.
Duan used to work in other places after graduating from university, and then as he saw the development of tourism in the village, he decided to return home to start his own business. In 2019, Duan transformed his idle old house into a B&B guesthouse. The rooms with fashion design and enthusiastic service brought him a steady stream of customers.
“In the past two years, although we were affected by the epidemic, the profit in the peak season is really good. In the summer of 2022, we earned more than 300,000 yuan (about 43,075 U.S. dollars),” he said.
Nanyu Village was once a poverty-stricken village in the mountains.
In 2012, the per capita income here was less than 2,000 yuan, and 52 out of the 220 households in the village were registered as poverty-stricken households.
“We are located in a deep mountainous area,” said Duan Chunting, party chief of Nanyu Village. “In the past, the transportation here was inconvenient. There was little farmland in our village, and people were not rich. Most of the young people in the village chose to go out to work.” –Agencies
