BEIJING, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Professor Li Xiaoyun's first steps into the Yao ethnic village of Hebian, literally translated as "riverside" at the end of 2014, felt less like a research trip than like entering a world the modern age had left behind.
Nestled in the dense tropical rainforests in China's southwestern Yunnan Province, the air in the village was thick with the smell of damp earth and aged timber of its traditional stilt houses. Children ran barefoot along muddy paths. Most homes lacked windows, let alone toilets or running water.
The village's primary connection to the outside world was a treacherous dirt road that turned to thick, clinging mud in the rain, forcing motorcycle riders to stop repeatedly to scrape clods of mud from their tyres.
Li, a renowned development scholar from China Agricultural University, was no stranger to poverty. But this was different. Here was a community seemingly suspended in time and stuck in what he later called a "poverty trap."
The village's livelihood -- based on sugarcane, cardamom and rubber -- was entirely at the mercy of nature. Sugarcane fields were frequently raided by wild elephants, while income from cardamom had dwindled to almost nothing due to climate change and price fluctuations. At that time, the annual per capita disposable income in Hebian stood at around 4,000 yuan (about 586 U.S. dollars) in 2015, placing it among the most impoverished areas of the country and the world.
Li began to imagine sustainable ways of lifting the village out of its economic predicament. After six months, he concluded that for a village so deeply impoverished, that conventional assistance measures would not be enough to have a permanent effect. The only solution was to innovate, exploring new industries capable of substantially raising farmers' incomes.
"Some villagers told me they hoped to work at a nearby scenic spot to make a living," Li said. "This idea inspired me." Hebian itself, nestled deep in the tropical rainforest with native farming culture and Yao ethnic traditions, lent itself to the development of new business opportunities that included leisure homestays, wellness tourism and study tours.
He envisaged existing dwellings being renovated in a way that retained Yao ethnic characteristics, preserving the original wooden structures in light-filled spaces, while adding bathrooms, kitchens and converting the upper loft areas into guest rooms.
Li gave the homestays a poetic name: "Mama Yao's Guestrooms," evoking the intimacy of a mother's welcome and the cultural heritage of the Yao people.
The local government embraced Li's proposal and provided funding for villagers to rebuild their homes. At the time, authorities had prepared 60,000 yuan in interest-free loans per household, along with 10,000 yuan in housing subsidies. Registered poor households could receive an additional 40,000 yuan in construction subsidies.
The poverty alleviation center that Li founded also raised more than 20,000 yuan per household to purchase windows, curtains, and modern bathroom fixtures.
There were initial problems convincing villagers of the practical merit of Li's vision. They believed their low, dark wooden houses could not be transformed into attractive, functional homes. Deng Linguo, then the village accountant, said, "I dreamed of a concrete brick house like in the cities."
Li created renderings of the new design and presented them to villagers. The appealing visuals captured their attention. Deng Xuemei was the first to volunteer, offering her home as the model house.
Three months later, Hebian's first new Yao-style wooden house stood complete and villagers were impressed. Suddenly people were lining up to take part in the initiative.
"Everyone has the desire for a better life," Li said.
By the end of 2017, most villagers had completed their new homes. Row after row of Yao-style stilt houses took shape across the village. The first "Mama Yao's Guestroom" opened for business.
At the same time, some village women participated in multiple public training sessions. Teachers hired by the local government showed them how to clean guest rooms to hotel standards, make beds properly, and prepare flour-based foods.
The guest rooms brought considerable income to Hebian, but Li knew the village needed to diversify its income revenues. Under Li's team's guidance, villagers began raising pigs and chickens, brewing liquor, collecting honey, and planting papaya and plantain.
As the success of this diversified economic model began to show, Li decided to form the rainforest Yao homestay cooperative in November 2018. Its core philosophy was to put management squarely in the hands of villagers, who became "rural CEOs."
One of the rural CEOs of the cooperative was 31-year-old Zhou Zhixue. After middle school, he sought work in the distant boomtown of Shenzhen, laboring as a porter and a chef. When the cooperative formed, his blend of local roots and external experience made him a natural leader.
There were some practical problems making the homestays a viable business. The most persistent complaint from tourists was that the guest rooms were not clean enough. Drawing on the rigorous standards and team management he witnessed in Shenzhen's professional hotels, Zhou devised a solution.
Beginning in 2022, the cooperative introduced market-based management mechanisms, grading and scoring guest rooms based on guest feedback and evaluations. Households with good sanitation received more guests and higher income. It was urban management know-how applied to a village setting. It worked, and service quality improved markedly.
By 2023, the cooperative's revenue primarily from tourism reached over 400,000 yuan annually. Some 70 percent of this income flowed directly to household members, while the remaining 30 percent was reinvested into the cooperative, funding future growth.
Several of Hebian's rural CEOs are now actively discussing ways to expand ecotourism enterprises, involving rainforest exploration, jungle picnics and forest trekking. They also started village cultural troupes, organizing activities like bonfire evenings, farming experiences, and ethnic dance performances, to attract more visitors and encourage them to stay longer.
A training program for the rural CEOs, jointly organized by China Agricultural University and tech giant Tencent, is also supporting Hebian's development. The program employs a dual-mentor model, sending rural CEOs to study technology at Tencent's Shenzhen headquarters and visit rural homestays in Beijing, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Shanghai, and Chongqing for hands-on learning.
Today, the mud track to Hebian is a paved road. More than 20 cars are parked beside the stilt houses. The sound of the forest is now mixed with the chatter of tourists and the hum of a small generator. The per capita disposable income in Hebian had soared from 4,000 yuan to over 26,000 yuan by 2022.
A new business model combining tech platforms, industry, and tourism is emerging. The "Natural Rainforest Eggs" project, for example has fulfilled over 500 orders since 2024 using e-commerce, generating more than 50,000 yuan in revenue. "Mama Yao's Guestrooms" has been accepting online reservations since 2021. The novel use of drones to ferry honey from hives in the mountains are now being discussed.
Li hopes other villages can ride the wave of new technologies and shifting consumer trends, developing industries and livelihoods to give younger generations a sense of purpose and a reason to stay.
Hebian's experience is in many ways a microcosm of a wider trend that has seen China's battle to eradicate absolute poverty succeed. The government provides support, including grants and interest-free loans as seed capital, while putting farmers at the center as the decision-makers; as builders, operators, and ultimately the beneficiaries of their own efforts. The role of external facilitators like Li and his team brought together stakeholders, offered expertise and channeled resources.
Over the past decade, Professor Li and his team have extended their blueprint in Hebian to more than 50 villages across Yunnan, as well as rural communities in Chongqing, Guangdong, Hubei, and Hainan.
"What's more difficult is preventing poverty from returning," Li said. It is something authorities understood clearly after the country's victory in eradicating absolute poverty was declared in 2021. A five-year transition period was implemented dedicated to both consolidating and expanding achievements in poverty alleviation and integrating them with rural revitalization.
As the "No. 1 central document" for 2026 was unveiled, its emphasis on regular and targeted assistance measures continues to resonate with those at the coalface of rural revitalization. It signals a shift in China's rural strategy from concentrated, time-bound campaigns to sustained, long-term stewardship, said Li.
The approach is designed to tap the full potential of rural areas and foster a robust new rural economic system, he added.
Hebian has now become a classroom for the Global South. In 2025, young entrepreneurs from Indonesia, Kenya and Tanzania, among others, visited Hebian as part of a cross-border training program. Li advocates for a model of South-South cooperation rooted in peer learning and mutual adaptation, where practical Chinese approaches -- from policies such as poverty registration and poverty alleviation by developing industries to modern agricultural production methods -- can be adapted abroad.
Arun G.C., Assistant Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Nepal, said that Hebian's model carries no complicated theoretical ideas, but only simple, solid practices. "Yet it has transformed villagers' thinking from 'we can never do this' to 'we can do it, too.' A sense of ownership is the most precious outcome of South-South cooperation." ■
