The good times in Yunding Village

Yunding Village. Photo by Zhang Xiangyang (People’s Vision)

Core Reading

Hundreds of days of clouds and fog, hundreds of days of ice and snow, and the number of days suitable for production in a year is less than 4 months - deep in the Wuling Mountains, such Natural conditions once caused Yunding Village to face development difficulties. Today, the local area relies on its natural endowments to develop ecological tourism, which has lifted Yunding Village out of poverty.

There are constant tourists on Bamian Mountain, which is more than 1,200 meters above sea level. Beside the long stone steps, Jia Shuilian is cleaning the trail. Under the cliff beside the stairs, the clouds and mist are steaming.

Jia Shuilian is a villager in Yunding Village, Liye Town, Longshan County, Hunan Province. She has lived in the mountains for decades. Not long ago, she put down her plow and started eating "ecological tourism rice" - she worked as a cleaner at Liye Ancient City Tourism Investment and Management Co., Ltd. in Longshan County, and her life was getting better and better...

< p> Good landscapes bring good popularity

The simple oven made a "sizzling" sound, and the house was filled with the aroma of roasted lamb. The tourists couldn't resist the temptation of delicious food, and the urge to serve the food became louder and louder.

44-year-old Zhang Xiaoquan quickly asked his wife to bring the dishes to the table. From this catering service point alone, he can make a net profit of less than 1,000 yuan a day; on good nights, when camping tourists come to rent tents, he can earn several hundred yuan more.

Zhang Xiaoquan is a villager in Yunding Village. Although his life is prosperous now, he was not so comfortable when he returned to the village to contract this hilltop a few years ago.

Yunding Village covers an area of ??7.33 square kilometers, but has only 6 natural villages and 818 people. Here, the average household has dozens of acres of land, and few families can farm all the land. Taking a fancy to this, in 2012, Zhang Xiaoquan, who was working hard outside, returned to the village to seek development.

"It depends on the weather to grow food to eat!" Some villagers advised him.

Yunding Village has many rocks, thin soil, and poor fertility, which limits the development of agriculture. Bamian Mountain, where the village is located, is an alpine platform and is shrouded in clouds, fog, rain and snow for almost half the year. Crops lack light and yields are generally low.

Zhang Xiaoquan refused to accept it, so he planted corn, sweet potatoes, and tobacco leaves all over the place. The weather was good and bad, but after all, he lost most of his capital. The original energy to work hard was gone.

At the beginning of 2018, Zhang Xiangyang, the first secretary of Yunding Village, found the crux of the problem, "Yunding Village, with its high mountains and heavy fog, usually has a beautiful sea of ??clouds and a bright starry sky on a clear day. It is not suitable to engage in pure agriculture, but it is suitable to develop eco-tourism." "With the help of Zhang Xiangyang, Zhang Xiaoquan established the "Yunding Top Ecological Agriculture Cooperative" and carefully selected 400 square meters of land on the edge of the cliff to turn into grassland for tourists to sightsee and camp. “At the peak of August, 20 tents were not enough to rent in one night!” Zhang Xiaoquan said excitedly.

The vegetation, mountains and rocks here have become famous local tourist attractions

"Ping ping ping ping ping ping", the sound of decoration can be heard from the attic of villager Peng Shirong's house. The original room is not enough, so Lao Peng plans to use the upstairs. A rough calculation shows that the investment is 40,000 to 50,000 yuan. Lao Peng said that tourists are coming one after another now, and what they are worried about is not the need for accommodation, but the quality improvement. But just last year, when the village encouraged Lao Peng to develop B&Bs, he was still hesitant: "Can tourists come to the top of this mountain?"

It's not surprising. Although the ecological environment here is good, at first glance, You can see the ancient city of Liye at the foot of the mountain, but the road up the mountain is dilapidated and takes an hour or two one way. After living in the mountains for decades, Peng Shirong only saw locals moving down the mountain, but not outsiders moving up the mountain.

In order to build his reputation, Zhang Xiangyang first invited relevant experts to inspect the natural ecology; he also held charity performances of guqin and guzheng at the top of dangerous peaks. The video of the performance with fluttering clothes attracted a lot of popularity after being circulated. Gradually, Yunding Village on Bamian Mountain became more and more famous.

Coincidentally, Longshan County is promoting all-region tourism and working together to improve the quality of the roads up the mountain. The five- to six-meter-wide winding mountain road leads directly to the top of Bamiang Mountain. It only takes 40 minutes to get from the ancient city of Liye to Yunding Village.

The villagers are not idle either, trying to find ways to improve their tourism experience. Every mountain, every stone, every water and every tree in Yunding Village has become a famous local tourist attraction.

Separate planting, breeding and tourism to protect the ecology

Today, the most obvious thing the villagers feel is that agricultural and sideline products have good sales. "In the past, we couldn't sell at a high price, but now, whether it's fresh meat or cured products, everything is sold out," Zhang Xiangyang said.

The villagers have benefited, and the scale of breeding has continued to expand, but it has brought new problems. The meadows on the mountains are thin, and grazing livestock have nibbled away the turf in some places, and even polluted the spring water.

Having just started eating "eco-tourism rice", you can't ruin your own job - the villagers have reached a consensus. Everyone looked at various hills and finally came up with a solution: Yunding Village has many inaccessible cliff terraces, which with a little renovation can become good natural pastures.

"It's cold on the mountain, so the cow can't sleep there at night. It's far away, and I can't drive it home every day." Villager Chu Yong'an had some objections. What he thought of, the village also thought of. Last year, Yunding Village raised nearly 390,000 yuan to build fences in three cliff-side pastures where livestock are raised intensively to help avoid the cold.

With the pasture, breeding, planting and tourism are separated, the environment of Yunding Village has been greatly improved. Fortunately, the precious water sources in the mountains have also been protected.

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Wuling Mountain District

Wuling Mountain District mainly refers to the area to which Wuling Mountain and other mountains belong. It spans the four provinces and cities of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing and Guizhou, and is 14 One of the concentrated contiguous poverty-stricken areas. There are many mountains and hills in the territory, the climate is harsh, and soil erosion and rocky desertification are serious in some areas.

The eight counties and cities of the Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in western Hunan Province are all located in Wuling Mountain. In recent years, Xiangxi has adhered to the combination of ecological protection construction and poverty alleviation and development, and has successively promoted artificial afforestation projects, the construction of Yangtze River shelterbelts, and ecological projects such as returning farmland to forest, comprehensive control of rocky desertification, and wetland protection and restoration. As of the end of 2019, the state's forest coverage rate has reached 70.24%, and the stock of standing trees has reached 48.3176 million cubic meters. It has been initially constructed with Aizhai National Forest Park as the center, with the Youshui and Yuanshui water systems as the context, and with Bamian Mountain It is an ecological barrier of "one garden, two waters and three mountains" structured by Yangfeng Mountain, Yangfeng Mountain and Laer Mountain.

In recent years, Xiangxi has actively developed ecological tourism based on many national and provincial forest parks, national wetland parks and other natural resources in the region to help alleviate poverty.

"People's Daily" (page 13, December 22, 2020)