Sanjianxi Village, located in ShuangShan Street of Zhangqiu District in Jinan City, China, is an ancient village with a long history and rich humanities. Not long ago, a TV series named Warmth in Sanquan was popular in China, telling the story of the village’s constant getting rich and beautiful.
Gao Shuzhen is the secretary of the Sanjianxi Village CPC branch. Over the years, in Sanjianxi Village, the secretary of the Village CPC branch has promoted folk customs with family education from ‘trivial matters’ to ‘practical matters’, which has enabled the majority of farmers to live in a stable environment, forming a vigorous, united and harmonious atmosphere. It provides a new way for China’s rural construction that can be replicated, popularized, and used for reference.
Strong industrial base: creating a new platform for common prosperity
There is a pink pig-shaped building in the north of Sanjianxi Village, which is 76 meters long and 13.5 meters high. It is a key development project in the village. The first floor is the agricultural product sorting, packaging and cold chain, and the second floor is the ‘agricultural creation space’. After completion, it will be a tourist park integrating leisure, research, labor experience and popularization of agricultural science.
After all, increasing farmers’ income is the most important thing. Sanjianxi Village has made remarkable achievements in industrial structure adjustment and entrepreneurial employment: from 2018 to 2021, the per capita disposable income of the village increased by 19.23%, the collective assets increased by 44.4%, and the collective annual income of the village increased by 215.2%, which is expected to exceed 10 million yuan this year.
Sanjianxi Village has made the whole village a big platform for gathering talents to start businesses and absorbing villagers’ employment by changing resources into assets, capital into share capital, and farmers into shareholders, which has gathered strong potential energy to promote high-quality development. On the big platform of Sanjianxi, a series of small platforms, such as the industrial park, agricultural creation park, food street, agronomy street, and ancient village tour, are competing to open, forming a development pattern of ‘southern for industry, northern for agriculture and central for tourism’, prompting villagers to increase their income through multiple channels. With a series of services, many young people have chosen to return home to start their own businesses.
Culture Core: Creating a New Highland of Spiritual Abundance
‘Home is the smallest unit, and the country is thousands of homes.’ While managing their own small families well, the villagers in Sanjianxi Village are united in the big family of the village collective like pomegranate seeds. The small family links with everyone and promotes the small family with everyone, forming a new pattern of one family extends to the neighborhood, and a safe family contributes to a safe community. Harmonious progress, prosperity and development have become a common practice.
As Secretary Gao said that what the villagers are most concerned about now is how to concentrate their minds on one piece, make the village better, and make their pockets bigger. And Xing Shouxiang said with emotion, ‘If you work hard, you can make a fortune, and if you work hard, you can be happy.’
The ‘home’ culture in Sanjianxi Village is constantly attracting more young people to return home to start their own businesses. At the same time, actively guide aspiring young people to return to their hometowns to start their own businesses, and let university student village officials take root at the grassroots level and lead them to make a fortune together.
Sanjianxi Village also launched the establishment of ‘Safe Family’, established the ‘Four Virtues List’, and selected ten-star civilized families, five good families, filial families, good daughter-in-law and good mother-in-law, etc., which mobilized the whole village people to participate enthusiastically. Nowadays, more than two-thirds of people in Sanjianxi Village have won different titles of civilization, and here, rural culture is taking shape.
When night falls, there will be melodious music in the spacious and bright cultural square of Sanchanxi Village, and the village aunts will follow the joyful music and dance in the square dance. On the nearby football field and basketball court, young people are running, sweating, releasing their joy to their heart’s content, playing badminton, singing opera, getting together and chatting, which presents a peaceful scene.
Ecology First: Creating a Beautiful and Livable New Home
“What is this place? Stepping into Sanjianxi, people can’t help asking. Yes, it’s still the countryside, but it has changed people’s traditional view of the countryside. Sitting in the idyllic scenery, it has a profound cultural heritage, which not only has the cleanliness and convenience of the city, but also has orderly order, as well as the delicate and beautiful countryside and strong nostalgia. Children playing by the stream, old people in the warm sunshine, and energetic young people are all protectors and witnesses of a happy life. “
There is a description of Sanjianxi Village by Huang Dahui, a villager in Sanjianxi Village, in his article ‘Welcome to Sanjianxi Village’ published in We Media. This is also the real feeling and experience of every villager living in Sanjianxi Village. The unremitting pursuit of all the villagers in Sanjianxi Village is to ‘make Sanjianxi a happy home that both urban and rural people yearn for’.
In the village, there are primary schools, clinics, village history museums, basketball courts, football fields, sports squares, road networks, pipe networks, greening, street lamps, sewage treatment and other infrastructure facilities. The 18-kilometer road around the village is neat and bright, and new energy charging piles are stationed in the village to serve. New faces, new sights and new features can be seen everywhere in the village. At present, the centralized sewage treatment and garbage collection and treatment rate of Sanjianxi have reached 100%, and the green coverage rate has exceeded 50%. The expansion and renovation of nursing homes have enabled more elderly people to have a sense of security.
In 2008, Sanjianxi Village began to protect its ancient village. Now, Furong Ancient Street, Pigeon Building, Library Building, Shigangzi Square, old stage and ancient road are more than 300 meters long. On the premise of ‘equality between urban and rural areas’, Sanjianxi should fully explore the beauty of multiple values in rural areas to attract more people to build and experience Sanjianxi.
(Liang Ruxiao; Zhou Xingquan; Liu Xiaohan; Zhang Gang; Li Xiaotong; Wei Tianyi；Chen luotao)
