With hues of golden walls and dark-tiled eaves, “neath ruby lanterns” glow, the ancient village teems with life, where vernal passions overflow. During the just-concluded Spring Festival holiday, Chenjiapu Village, Sidu Township, Songyang County, was decorated with lanterns and streamers and crowded with visitors. The hugely popular traditional village has attracted tourists from all over the country to visit and experience its charm.

Chenjiapu was once a “hollow village” where 80% of houses were vacant and the permanent population was fewer than 200. By recruiting “Common Prosperity Partners” as a link, the village has successively introduced diverse businesses such as Xianfeng Bookstore, Feiyanji Inn, and Jinyouguang Cultural and Creative Space, gradually developing into a well-known online-famous “model village” and creating a new situation of joint development and common prosperity featuring the return of talents, inflow of capital and integrated industries. Last year, the village received 650,000 tourists, generating over 42 million yuan in tourism revenue and 3.5 million yuan in collective income.

Lishui, located in the mountainous area of southwestern Zhejiang, has nearly 90% mountainous land, 73.3% of its administrative villages are in remote mountainous regions, and nearly 400,000 people live in scattered, inaccessible mountain areas. Practical conditions such as “sparse population, high mountains and long roads, and numerous small villages” have resulted in many weak, scattered and small “hollow village”.

The outflow of young adults, intensifying aging and declining industries have trapped “hollow village” mainly due to shortages of labor, capital and industries. To address these problems, Lishui has successively launched a series of reform measures, including “Cross-Mountain Multi-Link” Party-building Joint Construction, the “Joint Operation Reform” of Strong Village Companies, “Common Prosperity Workshops” for skills improvement and income growth, and Party-building-led mobile public services in mountainous areas. Leveraging organizational strengths to tackle difficulties, the city has enabled more “hollow villages” to become substantial, prosperous and beautiful.

To tackle the loss of population and shortage of talents, Lishui has continuously implemented the “Three Groups of People” plan to “retain local residents, call back returnees and attract new residents”, and launched the “I Have a Village in Zhejiang Lishui” campaign to recruit rural revitalization and common prosperity partners. Up to now, 315 villages have been promoted, 530 partners recruited, 431 projects launched, driving 1.01 billion yuan of social investment, and helping 143 mountain villages achieve social investment from scratch.

“Hollow village” generally face problems such as scattered facilities, weak coordination and small industrial scale. With Party-building joint construction as a link, Lishui has strengthened the concept of “strong supporting weak and integrated development”, broken the regional restrictions of separate operations in the past, promoted cluster development of rural areas, and realized resource concentration and efficiency amplification.

Taking the lead in the province, Lishui has established “Strong Village Companies” at the township level, pooling idle land, forests, houses and other resources of each village as shares for unified integration, packaging and operation, extensively attracting social investment, so that every village becomes a shareholder and receives dividends.

Pingnan Town, Longquan City, has implemented a common prosperity model of “whole-region integration and town-wide operation” for its 9 “hollow villages”. Through the pre-circulation or shareholding of contiguous village resources, it has developed 9 operational projects, including the “Peak of Zhejiang” Sky Off-Road Race, “Yunjian Pingnan” high-end homestay cluster, and “Alpine Original Products” special agricultural products. Last year, the operating income of 8 “hollow village” all exceeded 500,000 yuan.

Today, Strong Village Companies have become the main approach to strengthen the collective economy of “hollow village”. At present, 173 township-level Strong Village Companies cover all administrative villages, planning and implementing more than 1,120 projects such as intensive processing of agricultural products and high-quality homestays, with total assets exceeding 5 billion yuan and annual profits exceeding 600 million yuan.

Notably, Lishui has also promoted Party-building-led “Common Prosperity Workshops” through village-enterprise joint construction. Workshops have been established using idle rural houses and land, guiding qualified enterprises to locate suitable production and processing links in rural areas, effectively absorbing surplus rural labor to work “at their doorsteps”. Up to now, 1,087 workshops have been built across the city, creating jobs for more than 78,000 people at their doorsteps, with a per capita monthly increase of over 2,850 yuan.

Public services have been extended to the people’s hearts. To address the difficulties of coverage and high costs of public services in mountainous areas, the Municipal Party Committee Organization Department, together with more than 10 departments including civil affairs, health and supply and marketing, has launched the “Mobile Convenience and Common Prosperity Vehicles” Party-building joint construction. More than 1,480 scattered mobile supply vehicles, charity meal vehicles and medical vehicles have been integrated and upgraded to provide "ten assistance" services including medical care, shopping and sales promotion, serving over 30 million person-times annually.

To solve the dining difficulties for left-behind and elderly people in “hollow villages”, Jingning has innovated the “Add an Extra Pair of Chopsticks” neighborhood mutual-assistance elderly care model. Following the principle of “nearby pairing and two-way selection” among neighbors, it has launched practical and operable mutual-assistance modes such as “central household dining” and “multi-household rotation” at 15 sites in 13 townships. The average meal cost has dropped by 40%, the meal service radius has been reduced from 3 kilometers to 500 meters, and the satisfaction rate of the elderly and their migrant children exceeds 95%.

The revitalization of “hollow village” depends on strong “leading geese”. To tackle the problems of low capacity and weak combat effectiveness of village-level Party organizations in “hollow village”, the “Local Talent Return Project” has been implemented. A talent database of entrepreneurial experts, industrial leaders and young college students has been established for each village, with targeted contact by township Party committees, attracting more than 600 outstanding talents to join village-level teams.

Meanwhile, through the “Leading Goose Academic Improvement Program”, potential Party secretaries and reserve cadres of “hollow village” have been enrolled in the Open University of China. Adopting the training mode of “academic education + centralized training + on-the-job practice”, more than 300 “hollow village” cadres have obtained college diplomas or above. The “100 Famous Teachers, 1,000 Outstanding Students” project has been deepened, organizing more than 200 provincial, municipal and county-level outstanding rural governance teachers to carry out “1+N” cross-township and cross-county pairing and guidance, providing on-site “diagnosis” and solutions for “hollow village”.

Under the leadership of Ding Junwei, an outstanding rural governance teacher, Xinxikeng Village, Rongjiang Township, Jinyun County, has systematically developed tourism projects such as a water park, parent-child beach and star camping, and successfully launched a series of activities including “Spending the Spring Festival in Jinyun”. The village’s collective operating income has risen from 170,000 yuan to 600,000 yuan, blazing a revitalization path from a “hollow village” to an online-famous village.