Bamboo celebrated for role in village's past and future

During the ongoing annual general meeting of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, participants learned in person how ecological development can help economic growth in China's rural areas on their visit to Dazhuyuan village in Zhejiang province.

The beautiful, clean and well-planned village in Anji county under the administration of Huzhou, a neighboring city of Hangzhou in the province in East China, amazed the visitors with its advanced green development practices.

After about a 90-minute ride from the Hangzhou International Expo Center, CCICED members, researchers and media representatives reached the village, where flowers and bamboos could be seen along the roads.

Dazhuyuan, which literally means a big bamboo garden, has developed a leisure agricultural system that integrates landscaping, sightseeing, rural working experience and marketing of agricultural products.

The village's collective economic income reached nearly 1.6 million yuan ($231,512), and the per capita income of the farmers stood at 33,700 yuan in 2018, ranking Dazhuyuan among the richest villages in China, local officials said.

However, many of the villagers were trapped into poverty more than a decade ago when they made a living mainly on growing and selling bamboo.

"As a local specialty, bamboo works as a bridge to link Anji with the rest of the world, as we have developed a lot of green products from the plant," said Shen Mingquan, Party secretary of the county.

The root of the bamboo can be made into handicrafts and the bamboo shoots are used to cook dishes of different flavors. The bamboo wood is turned into home furniture and appliances and the tree's juice can be processed for drinks and health products, Shen said.

"The bamboo resources in Anji account for just 1.8 percent of the country's total but have generated about 22 percent of the industrial output in the single category of the country," he noted.

A special performance, where all the instruments are made from bamboo, was staged to visitors at Dazhuyuan village for showcase the invented functions of the plant that the villagers are continuing to work on. The bamboo instruments, including a tray, drum, saw and keyboard made from the plant, could imitate different sounds: running water, birdsong and working people's noises. Those feats drew great interest from the audience.

Ali Mchumo, director-general of the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization, tried to move the soybeans in a big bamboo tray to make sounds like wind blowing through bamboo forests.

"It's very interesting," said Mchumo.

Also in Dazhuyuan, where about 560 households are located, the local government invited architects to design a favorable environment where local villagers could see green mountains and clean rivers to enjoy the benefits from the environmental protection.

Garbage sorting has been adopted across the entire village, according to local officials. The villagers can also place the sorted garbage into a machine that can accumulate points on their bank cards.