A new wave of vitality is sweeping through rural revitalization efforts, with the creation of distinctive industry IPs unlocking fresh potential for consumption in the countryside.
In Linshu County, Shandong Province, along the east bank of the Shu River, over 20,000 acres of chestnut forests stretch for 15 kilometers beside golden sandy beaches. The villages nestled against this "Golden Beach and Chestnut Sea" were once economically underdeveloped. Today, a zoning reform that breaks down village boundaries and integrates resource advantages has brought transformative change to these once-quiet chestnut-growing communities.
During the height of summer, a concert was held at the water station cafe in Shawo Village. Previously, Shawo and nine other villages along the Shu River developed in a fragmented manner with scattered resources. In 2024, Qingyun Town innovatively established a special task force for the zone, bringing together village Party organizations, cadres, specialized cooperatives, and other forces from within the area. They decided to prioritize cultural and tourism development by leveraging the local chestnut forests and proximity to the Shu River, coordinating efforts to build the "Yimeng Fine Chestnuts" development zone, thereby breaking down development barriers between villages. In 2025 alone, tourist visits to the zone exceeded 1.6 million, marking a shift from isolated traditional farming villages to a popular tourist destination.
Beyond Simple Consolidation
The zonal development is not merely a simple regional consolidation but a comprehensive institutional overhaul. The approach avoids a "one-size-fits-all" model, instead exploring a novel development pattern of "enterprise entry, capital empowerment, and market operation." This has led to the systematic renovation and upgrading of 2,000 acres of chestnut orchards and dozens of idle old buildings within the zone, cumulatively revitalizing 22,000 mu of idle land and implementing over ten cross-village collaborative specialty projects.
The transformation of these once-disconnected villages into a collaborative unit has been driven in part by the return of young people. The flexible ideas brought by young entrepreneurs have continuously introduced new business formats. The old, abandoned Shu River water pumping station has been transformed into a waterfront cafe that hosts music festivals, the village primary school has become a intangible cultural heritage (ICH) workshop, and old buildings have taken on new life. New recreational spaces have been planned under the chestnut forest canopy, and villages are working together to create a matrix of specialty agricultural products.
Transformation Extends Beyond Industry
The changes in the zone go beyond industry. Qingyun Town integrated over 60 million yuan in various funds to carry out whole-village governance, greening improvements, courtyard renovations, and toilet upgrades across the ten villages. Today, the rates for domestic sewage treatment and harmless waste disposal have both reached 100%.
Intangible Heritage Blossoms, Empowering Revitalization
With the ten villages joining forces, Shawo Village took the lead as a pilot within the zone. They gathered cultural resources from surrounding villages, giving rise to an "intangible cultural heritage industrial circle" that carries both nostalgia and creativity. The long-abandoned school building in Shawo Village has been carefully renovated into an ICH experience space, where local crafts like willow weaving, copper rubbing, and paper-cutting are finding new vitality.
Young entrepreneurs have gathered these ICH skills to create collective ICH stores, bringing these dormant rural crafts into more people's daily lives. According to Ji Yujie, head of Youli Culture, they have invited ICH masters from various counties to the village. These masters teach villagers for free, and once a villager masters a skill, they can earn money right at their "doorstep."
The village collective contributes idle school buildings and old courtyards as equity to the ICH workshops. The operators are responsible for branding, channels, and training. Villagers receive guaranteed income from land transfers and can also earn piece-rate wages by participating in production, with outstanding artisans receiving quarterly bonuses. This arrangement benefits all four parties, making the workshops truly sustainable.
The willow weaving craft in Linshu Qingyun has been passed down for 1,400 years. Artisan Lao Shi once worried that his son, working away from home, would not return. Now, with the fame of the ICH workshops in the zone growing and willow weaving orders arriving from overseas, his son Shi Xiaolong decisively returned home to start a factory.
Since ICH entered Shawo Village, subtle changes have occurred in everyone. Fang Lei, who married into the village from a neighboring one, learned tie-dye and indigo dyeing skills through the zone's ICH workshop platform and has now become a dyeing instructor. Inspired by her, more and more rural women are actively entering the workshops to learn traditional crafts and achieve flexible employment at their doorsteps.
Century-Old Chestnut Forests "Grow" New Business Formats
With ICH gaining an industrial foundation, the countryside is bustling with activity. The chestnut forests, guarded for generations in the "Yimeng Fine Chestnuts" zone, are also "growing" entirely new business models.
The chestnut forests covering the mountainsides are a green treasure guarded for generations by villages along the Shu River. In Shawo Village alone, there are 70,000 ancient chestnut trees over a century old, with the oldest "Chestnut Ancestor" having grown there for 1,400 years. While the outdoor temperature might be 33°C, walking into the chestnut forest feels immediately cool. Chestnut trees love sunlight, their branches and leaves spreading out like open green umbrellas. Furthermore, the soil they grow in is sandy, with strong permeability, making it less prone to waterlogging.
In the past, villagers increased their income solely through selling raw chestnuts, with limited added value. Now, young entrepreneurs have developed year-round experiential activities: collecting chestnut flower honey in spring, making forest-floor clay oven bread in summer, harvesting chestnuts in autumn, and hosting chestnut forest bonfire markets in winter. They have also partnered with food companies to develop deep-processed products like small-packaged chestnut kernels, chestnut bread, and chestnut pancakes. This has increased the average income per mu for orchard farmers from 4,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan. Based on an average household holding of 5 mu of chestnut forest, this translates to an additional annual income of 5,000 yuan per household from this source alone.
The zone has also developed a distinctive "Big Chestnut" IP, launching a series of co-branded cultural and creative products with ICH elements. The rural catering sector has experienced explosive growth, with farmhouse restaurants in the zone increasing from 3 to 30 within two years, continuously heating up the rural consumption market.
Today, the "Yimeng Fine Chestnuts" zone has established a diverse and stable income-increasing system. Villagers can increase their earnings through various channels such as contributing land or housing for equity or lease, processing cultural and creative products, and teaching ICH skills. The average annual per capita income for villagers in the zone has increased by 20,000 yuan, enabling over 300 villagers to find employment "at their doorstep."
The ten-village integrated development model has also led to the sustained growth of village collective economies. The total collective income of the ten villages surged from less than 3 million yuan in 2024 to over 6 million yuan in 2025, adding a richer hue to the picture of rural revitalization.
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