Former Party secretary helps turn dusty village into tourist destination

When the wind blew through Nangou village, sand filled the sky. When it rained, mud swallowed people's boots. That was the village where Bai Tao grew up in Wuqi county, Shaanxi province, in the 1970s — a landscape of yellow dust and water shortages typical of northwestern China's loess plateau.

By the time Bai, 56, formally handed over his role as the village's Party secretary to a new leader earlier this year, the once-barren landscape had been transformed into a tourism destination with lush hills and a clear reservoir, supporting the livelihoods of hundreds of families.

A tourism venture established during his eight-year tenure has generated more than 6 million yuan ($882,000) in total tourism revenue, according to local media.

That has brought more than 1 million yuan in revenue to the village collective, contributing to an average increase of about 3,000 yuan in household income over the period, village authorities said.

Bai left the village in 1991 to work in civil engineering, spending nearly two decades away.

His father had served as Nangou's Party secretary in the 1950s, and Bai said he felt compelled to carry on that legacy when he returned in 2018.

His return coincided with a broader national push to turn ecological restoration into economic growth through ecotourism and other green industries, a strategy that has reshaped many of China's less-developed and ecologically fragile regions over the past decade.

Nangou's transformation began in 1998, when it became one of the first pilot sites for a national program that paid farmers to stop cultivating steep hillsides and grazing livestock in environmentally fragile areas. At the time, the move was considered bold, particularly in poor communities such as Nangou, where livelihoods often took precedence over environmental protection.

The then-Party secretary, Yan Zhixiong, persuaded villagers to replace unproductive farmland with walnut and apricot trees. His reasoning was straightforward: cash crops could restore the environment while increasing incomes.