Once plagued by fragmented farmland, a weak industrial base and pollution, Jingxia – a nearly 300-year-old village — has reinvented itself as a shining example of rural revitalization in Guangdong province.
Jingxia’s remarkable “green-to-gold” transformation recently garnered extensive front-page coverage in major outlets like the People’s Daily, CCTV News, China Global Television Network and China National Radio.
Located within the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City (中新广州知识城), Jingxia Village now stands as a national 3A-level tourist attraction, demonstrating the deep integration of rural revitalization and zero-carbon development along with a pastoral landscape.
This is in stark contrast to the scene just three years ago when the village suffered from a single-industry economy, population outflow, seriously contaminated water bodies and dilapidated farmhouses.
A dramatic shift began in 2023. As part of the “Beautiful Guangdong” initiative, Huangpu District embarked on sweeping environmental remediation, focusing on ecological restoration and harmonizing nature, people and the urban environment through innovation.
Jingxia was selected as the sole pilot site in South China for the United Nations’ “China Zero-Carbon Village Promotion Project”.
Today, rooftops across the village are equipped with photovoltaic (PV) panels. Besides helping to achieve “zero-carbon” goals, these installations provide villagers with monthly electricity subsidies. By late last year, all the 282 village farmhouses had rooftop PV installations, with an estimated annual power generation of 4.37 million kilowatt-hours, making the village essentially self-sufficient in electricity.
Jingxia also set an example for efficient, prefabricated construction, with new houses “assembled like Lego” — a process that takes just 12 minutes to build one wall and two hours to complete one room.
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Photos by China Daily’s Parker Zheng offer a glimpse of the transformed village.
