Formerly rundown villages are attracting visitors and boosting local incomes. Zhao Xinying reports from Huichang, Jiangxi.

Children run amid a sea of flowers in Dongtou village, Huichang county, Jiangxi province, in March. (ZHU HAIPENG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Walking along the smooth cement road and looking at the beautiful houses surrounded by neat farmland and chicken coops, visitors to Daxiba village would never believe the state it was in just a few years ago.

"Garbage was piled up on the doorsteps and sewage was poured directly onto the roads. The mess mixed with the dirt and made the roads smelly and muddy to walk on," recalled Liu Jinhua, Party secretary of the village in Huichang county, Jiangxi province.

"A flyswatter was a necessity in every household, and villagers had to be prepared to swat flies all the time because there were so many of them."

Those conditions persisted until February 2018, when the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, China's Cabinet, issued a plan to improve rural living environments nationwide.

In line with the plan, the efforts focused on the disposal of household waste and sewage, as well as improving the appearance of the villages. In addition, a goal was set that by the end of last year, the improvements would be obvious with the countryside looking generally clean, tidy and orderly.

The campaign was conducted in all of Huichang's villages, including Daxiba.

Unhusked rice is spread in a square in Daxiba village, Huichang, during the November harvest season. (ZHU HAIPENG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Waste disposal

A report by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs showed that as of September 2018, almost 25 percent of domestic waste in China's rural areas was left untreated, while 80 percent of sewage in the countryside was not properly processed. Moreover, one-third of villages lacked sealed roads.

In Daxiba, which suffered from all of those problems, residents and local officials decided to take the opportunities presented by the improvement plan and create a new-look village.

With the help of the local government, they obtained funding of more than 1 million yuan (US$155,000) and launched a systematic project to improve the living environment.

The first step was to build cement roads to connect the village with the outside world and link all 160 households in the village. Four residents were hired to clean the roads every day, Liu said.

Since then, the villagers have said farewell to "being covered with dust on sunny days and mud on rainy days" as a result of the dirt roads, he added.

Unlike Daxiba, Gufang, a village 3 kilometers from Huichang's downtown, had a 3.5-meter-wide cement road that connected it with the outside world. Things were still difficult, though.

"The road was good, but it was a headache whenever vehicles heading in different directions met. The road was too narrow for two cars to pass at the same time," Gufang resident Zou Yongcun said.

The problem bothered local officials as they were concerned about the development of the village.

Gufang was traditionally known as a beautiful settlement with green hills, a wide range of vegetation, clear ponds and neat farmland.

As such, officials had long dreamed of using the beautiful scenery to attract visitors from urban areas and develop rural tourism, according to Liu Houshan, director of the Gufang village council.

The road was one of the barriers to that development. "At the time, very few people wanted to travel to our village because of the lack of road coverage," Liu Houshan said.

The situation was improved by expanding the original 3.5-meter-wide village road into a 6-meter-wide two-lane carriageway.

"With a wider road and more convenient transportation, we've seen more tourists," said Liu Houshan, adding that about 10,000 visitors arrive every month, while at peak times the number can exceed 2,000 a day, which boosts local incomes.

Farmers pack daisies at a flower-planting base in Banjing village, Huichang, in November. (ZHU HAIPENG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Clean living environment

Liu Jinhua said that in addition to the improved road, other changes have been made to Daxiba's living environment. Trash cans have been placed on every doorstep and the villagers are required to dump all their domestic garbage into them.

Every morning, teams of cleaners collect all the garbage and place it in a huge skip at the village entrance. Later, other workers arrive to collect the rubbish, he added.

He said the village also helped residents to erect fences outside their houses in line with unified standards.

On their small pieces of land enclosed by wire fences, the residents can raise chickens and plant vegetables, thus making household environments tidier and cleaner.

"In addition, we assess the cleanliness of all the households twice a month: The five families with the cleanest homes are praised and the five with the worst are publicly criticized," Liu Jinhua said.

Meanwhile, as people became richer after the village was lifted out of poverty in 2016, many demolished their shabby adobe houses and started building new homes.

The village committee recommended that the residents, who are all members of the Hakka people, build their houses in the traditional style, which is characterized by grey roofs, white walls and rafters that extend from the external walls, according to Chen Rongqing, an official. "Now with quite a large number of Hakka-style houses, our village looks unique and beautiful," he said.

Yang Yunchun, a Daxiba native, is excited about the changes.

"Now, everywhere is so clean and tidy that there is no garbage to be seen," the 64-year-old said. "You rarely see any flies, either."

Clear water, green hills

The unsupervised discharge of sewage no longer troubles Daxiba's residents.

With the help of the local government, an underground sewer network was laid in April to connect all the households in the village and treatment facilities were also installed, according to Chen.

"Since then, the villagers have stopped pouring wastewater directly onto the roads and have started pouring it into the sewers," he said.

The wastewater converges in two treatment tanks. After a number of treatments in the facilities, the dirty, smelly liquid is transformed into nontoxic, harmless clear water, which can be used to irrigate farmland.

"Daxiba's reputation as a dirty place is history," Chen said. "Now, the village is renowned across the county as a beautiful, neat and livable place."

Residents of Xiaomi, a township 30 km from Daxiba, were also accustomed to seeing the local roads covered by black water and mud.

However, the black water was not sewage. Rather, it was a result of water and soil leaking from an abandoned coal mine on a small hill in the village.

Though coal extraction ceased many years ago, the vegetation destroyed by the mining activities was not restored. When it rained－a frequent occurrence in Xiaomi－black mud slid downhill along with the water, entering farmland, rivers and even people's homes.

The runoff was a headache for local people until early 2018, when a project to restore the environment around the mine started, according to Yan Zhiwang, a villager whose home lies at the foot of the formerly barren hill.

Pine trees, camellias and grasses were planted to prevent rain from washing the soil away, he said. At the same time, a moat was dug to separate the hill from farmland, rivers and residences, said the 54-year-old, who participated in the project.

"Now, just two years later, the hill is green again and those of us who live at the bottom don't have to worry about dirty, unsafe mudflows," he said. "We are so happy with the changes."

Chen Xia'nan, Tian Zimu and Liu Yue contributed to this story.