The persimmons in Longtan Village are turning red.
Returning entrepreneur Chen Zhongye crafts yellow wine lattes. New-generation farmer Pan Guolao fertilizes his fields. A team prepares for a Siping Opera public performance competition. The core area of Nanwan Village at sunrise.
The national development plan emphasizes "accelerating agricultural and rural modernization and solidly promoting comprehensive rural revitalization." In the inaugural year of this plan, Pingnan County is undergoing a qualitative transformation from "preserving houses" to "revitalizing industries." By deeply integrating ancient building restoration, think-tank empowerment, ecological agriculture, digital residency, and intangible cultural heritage creative industries, Pingnan is providing an observable, referential grassroots model for Chinese-style agricultural and rural modernization.
Pingnan County boasts 152 villages, with over two-thirds retaining their overall historical character. It is home to 25 traditional Chinese villages, 3 nationally recognized historical and cultural towns/villages, and 7 traditional architectural cultural tourism destinations, earning it the designation of a national demonstration county for the concentrated, contiguous protection and utilization of traditional villages. On May 18, the Fujian Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development announced the inclusion of Pingnan's successful practices in a provincial list of replicable experiences for historical and cultural protection and utilization. This marks the elevation of the local rural revitalization model—"building a foundation through restoration, empowering through think tanks, and invigorating villages through diverse industries"—from spontaneous grassroots practice to a provincially recognized, standardized, and scalable experience.
Modern rural development must answer the dual challenge of "preserving rural nostalgia" and "achieving common prosperity." Pingnan has tackled the industry pain points of high costs and long cycles in ancient building restoration through its "Labor-and-Materials Method." It has addressed bottlenecks in the circulation and activation of idle assets through a "rent-for-maintenance" mechanism. By building an ecological agriculture system, it has created a value chain from "a single field to the entire industry." Ultimately, this forms a replicable, scalable systematic solution for rural revitalization.
In the evening, the "Jingxuan" guesthouse in Xiling Township's Longtan Village is brightly lit. This building is a preserved and restored Qing Dynasty wooden structure. Beneath the carved window lattices, the blue glow from three laptop screens mixes with the sounds of frogs and dogs from the fields outside. This was the venue for the inaugural Digital and Intelligent Rural Construction Hackathon. From May 21 to 24, over 150 programmers, designers, and local "new villagers" artists gathered to discuss how to use code to give wings to Pingnan's rural revitalization.
Once a typical "hollowed-out village," Pingnan's countryside has now transformed into a "super community" without walls. From the innovative "Labor-and-Materials Method" for restoring old houses to the new cultural and tourism formats introduced by "new villagers," and the support of expert think tanks, Pingnan is restoring dignity to the land, providing a place for nostalgia, and creating a future worth pursuing.
The Race Against Time: A 'Surgical' Restoration
"Lift!" A deep Min Dong accent cuts through the morning mist. Seventy-two-year-old master craftsman Zhuo Jiduan squints, intently watching a century-old beam being slowly maneuvered back into place. Behind him, a Qing Dynasty residence in Nanwan Village is being restored. In front of him, his apprentices Lu Sunfu and Chen Changsheng operate a simple wooden support frame. There is no roar of heavy machinery, only the dull *thud* of interlocking mortise and tenon joints. This is a demonstration of the ancient restoration technique called "stealing beams and replacing pillars"—replacing a rotten load-bearing beam without dismantling the entire house, much like a surgical procedure.
Wood shavings dance in the slanted sunlight. Zhuo Jiduan wipes his sweat and mutters to a reporter beside him, "If no one learns this craft anymore, it will truly be buried in the earth along with these old houses." The intricate and risky scene witnessed by the reporter is a demonstration of Pingnan's path to reviving its ancient villages. For Pingnan, protecting ancient villages is first a race against time and a choice between "preservation" and "utilization."
"Preservation" is the baseline and a technical challenge. Pingnan has 25 traditional Chinese villages, ranking high provincially. However, these precious "cultural carriers" were once endangered due to disrepair and lack of funds. Faced with a scarcity of skilled workers and high restoration costs, Pingnan developed a local method called the "Labor-and-Materials Method." It bypasses the red tape of traditional project bidding, allowing village committees to act as implementing bodies, sourcing materials themselves, hiring local craftsmen, organizing villagers to contribute labor, and overseeing the entire process.
This approach, seemingly "rustic," hits the mark. A county official explained that in the Longtan cultural and creative area, this innovation reduced average construction costs by 20% and shortened project timelines by 3 to 4 months. More importantly, it brought local craftsmen like Zhuo Jiduan back to the historical stage. By establishing a building craftsmen association and a directory of traditional artisans, Pingnan not only restored hundreds of old houses but also cultivated a "rooted construction team." Today, Pingnan's ancient building restoration teams have ventured beyond the mountains, undertaking projects nationwide and spreading this deep-mountain expertise.
"Utilization" is the way forward and an art. Merely restoring houses is not enough; the challenge is giving old buildings new life in the modern era. The answer is "activation." To tackle complex property rights and difficult transfers, the local area innovated with a "rent-for-maintenance" model. Village committees act as "intermediaries," transferring old houses from original villagers and then uniformly recruiting and leasing them to "new villagers" for cultural and creative development.
"Before, if an old house collapsed, it just collapsed. Now the village rents it, repairs it, and we can collect rent. Seeing it become beautiful makes us happy too," said old villager Wu Ming'an. For "new villagers," they avoid directly confronting complex property rights issues and can focus more on content creation and business innovation. Through the lenses of creative talents, dilapidated earthen walls once seen as burdens become atmospheric "internet-famous walls." Abandoned farming tools are transformed into unique interior decorations through careful design. Old houses are no longer dormant relics but become "living" spaces that can be inhabited, consumed, and evoke emotional resonance.
From the skill inheritance of "stealing beams and replacing pillars" to the institutional innovation of the "Labor-and-Materials Method," and the exploratory model of "intermediary transfer," Pingnan uses brick and tile to build a solid protective wall for its ancient villages. This invisible wall not only shields the old houses from the erosion of time but also lays a stable material foundation for the subsequent "intellectual input" and "business format explosion."
A Super Community Fostering a Sense of Ease
In the afternoon at Siping Village, new farmer Pan Guolao, barefoot, steps onto the warm, moist soil, bending to inspect the growth of rice seedlings. On the field ridge, several urban "sponsors" are enjoying the fun of transplanting seedlings with their children. This scene intertwines with the aroma of coffee and the sound of keyboard taps from Longtan Village a few kilometers away, sketching the unique rural ease and urban-rural vitality of a "super community."
In Pingnan, ecological agriculture is no longer backbreaking labor, and cultural tourism is no longer a uniform photo spot. It is a new experiment about reconnecting "people" with the "land." Driven by the Pingnan Rural Revitalization Research Institute, Pan Guolao's "Shiguang Terraced Fields" have long transcended traditional farming. "We don't use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Fish and ducks eat the insects, and their waste is the best fertilizer. Costs are down, but the quality and price of the rice are up," Pan explained. The Institute introduced the concept of "Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)," establishing a system for spatial resource and material-energy cycling, like "raising fish in rice paddies" and "growing mushrooms under trees."
In 2025, these terraced fields hosted over 5,000 visitors from study groups and individual tourists. Clients from Beijing and Shanghai have "sponsored a field" for consecutive years, transforming Pan Guolao from an ordinary farmer "worried about sales" into a confident new-generation farmer. The Institute provides theory and resources, new farmers handle implementation, and the government safeguards the process through "talent loans" and the "I Have a Field in Pingnan" campaign. This three-way collaboration allows "one field" to grow "N possibilities."
The "one field" concept is a practical example of the "broad food perspective." Locally, a late-Qing Dynasty rammed-earth ancestral house was converted into a "Broad Food Hall," officially opening on May 24, 2024. The exhibition features sections like "Food as Heaven," "Meat, Eggs, Poultry, Dairy, Fish, Fruit, Fungi, Tea," and "Pingnan Herbs," allowing visitors to understand the food chain through exploration. Since opening, the hall has hosted high-level dialogues and international conferences. The local practice project "Food as Heaven" was featured at the China Pavilion of the Milan Triennale, telling the world China's rural narrative of "food—ecology—culture."
Next to the ancient stage in neighboring Longtan Village, the singing of the national intangible cultural heritage "Siping Opera" blends strangely with jazz from a café. Among the earliest "new villagers," Hu Wenliang leads a design team incorporating facial makeup elements from opera costumes into the packaging design of red yeast yellow wine. The Qing Dynasty house he rented, "Tan She," serves as both a guesthouse and a creative incubator. Here, ancient brewing techniques are infused with modern aesthetics like anime and oil painting. Hu says, "We want to prove that the countryside can be trendy and international."
This "trendiness" is not a departure from tradition but a modern "translation" of rural culture. Ancient red yeast yellow wine, through the creativity of "new villagers," has transformed from "grandpa's rustic wine" into "a trendy drink for young people." Today, Pingnan's ancient villages are no longer mere rural tourism check-in spots but a multi-format complex integrating ecological agriculture, intangible cultural heritage creativity, and rural wellness.
Forging a New Paradigm for Beautiful Villages
At the waste sorting point in Siping Village, a villager skillfully pours kitchen waste into a compost bin. These seemingly useless peels and leaves are undergoing a green transformation from "waste" to "black gold soil" through a technique called "ecological composting." This is not just simple waste management; it is a key step for Pingnan's villages moving from a "super community" towards a "low-carbon community." Future rural life should be not only poetic but also characterized by material-energy cycling and low carbon emissions.
Guo Jixin, Secretary-General of the Rural Revitalization Research Institute, crouches by the field, scooping up a handful of dark, glossy soil teeming with earthworms. "This is fertilizer made from kitchen waste compost, which can replace chemical fertilizers that deplete soil vitality." In the past, rural straw and kitchen waste were often discarded or burned, polluting the environment and wasting renewable resources. Now, within the ecological composting system promoted by Institute experts Wang Songliang and Wu Chengci, this "waste" has become a treasure.
In 2026, Pingnan added two new pilot villages for ecological composting. This green, low-carbon technology not only effectively reduces agricultural carbon emissions but also serves as a vivid classroom for rural low-carbon education. Pilot villages frequently host "low-carbon living" salons, where urban families learn how to make enzymes from fruit peels and use straw mulching to retain soil moisture. A Shanghai mother participating with her child remarked, "Before, bringing kids to the countryside was about seeing the sights. Now it's about learning the ways. Rural life means even the waste has to be 'sorted properly.'"
While composting addresses the cycling of "materials," "Youdao Longtan" addresses the collaboration of "people." In the Longtan Village committee office, a large screen displays a real-time "digital governance map": the credit rankings of "new villagers," bookings for public spaces, even the progress of ancient house restorations—all converted into flowing data streams, fully traceable, visible, and auditable. This is the "Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)" governance model Pingnan is exploring.
On April 22, 2026, a leading domestic digital community, SeeDAO, was established in Pingnan, creating the nation's first pilot for DAO-based governance in a deep-mountain ancient village. Since then, the digitalization and AI integration of the ancient village have advanced further. Based on the results of the Digital and Intelligent Rural Construction Hackathon in late May, a development team customized a "Digital Villager Token System" for Longtan Village. "New villagers" earn corresponding "Longtan Coin" credits by participating in public services like ancient building patrols and cultural tours. These credits can be exchanged for agricultural products at the village cooperative and serve as a key criterion for selecting "Honorary Villager of the Year." This transparent mechanism greatly stimulates villagers' enthusiasm for public affairs.
Once, rural governance relied on the "acquaintance society" and the prestige of the village party secretary. Now, Pingnan is experimenting with using "smart contracts" to solidify rules. Pingnan's exploration of ancient village revival has surpassed simple "tourism development" or "agricultural cultivation." It is forging a development path of synergistic innovation combining "cultural creativity + agricultural entrepreneurship + technological innovation."
Currently, Pingnan plans to standardize "ecological composting technology," promote a "low-carbon village" initiative to neighboring townships, and develop three forms of residency: "leisure wellness + creative entrepreneurship + digital nomads." Simultaneously, it aims to open-source and share the "DAO governance" platform, allowing more ancient villages to access this digital governance system at low cost. Pingnan's ancient villages are proving that the ultimate form of rural revitalization is not turning the countryside into a city. Instead, it is using modern technology and ecological wisdom to create a new paradigm for beautiful villages that are more livable, intelligent, green, and sustainable than cities.
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