“I came because there are a lot of interesting people here,” said Li Weishi, a 53-year-old entrepreneur who runs a food company in the northern city of Harbin. “A peaceful view is just one aspect. I am more attracted by the fact that I can be close to talented people and get inspired.”

Li is one of the 33 city people who took up the offer during its initial roll-out. These new residents are successful professionals and know each other through mutual friends. Most of them come to the town for holidays.

The project is the latest experiment aimed at alleviating poverty in China, a key national policy goal. Communist Party officials in Dashuibo branded the exercise as being part of “rural revitalisation”, another high-profile policy put forward by President Xi Jinping, in 2017.

The average annual disposable income for rural residents in the Weihai region, of which Dashuibo is a part, was US$3,388 in 2019. That exceeds the national average of US$2,448 for rural residents but is only half that of the region’s urban residents.

“In the past, we kept hearing about poverty alleviation. But going forward, we are going to hear about rural revitalisation a lot more frequently,” said Cheng Zhengyu, student leader of a programme launched by Tsinghua University, in Beijing, that transforms vacant farmhouses into community spaces. The Dashuibo project is part of this programme, and was initiated by a group of Tsinghua alumni.

As in other towns in Shandong province, the population of Dashuibo is ageing rapidly, as young people leave to make new lives in cities. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of children under the age of 14 living in the town dropped from 3,600 to 2,180, while the number of residents aged 65 or over almost doubled, to 6,465.

“When I first came to the town, a middle-aged village lady asked, ‘Why does a young man like you come to a town full of old men and women?’” said Li Jiutai, the 40-year-old architect leading the revitalisation project in Dashuibo. “The lady thought I was wasting my talents by coming to this place.”

In 2017, Li had helped another Tsinghua graduate build a school in Shandong. “Through that project, I came to know the local officials. I also fell in love with the place, the honest and kind villagers and the pastoral scenery,” said Li.

In 2018, Li, who was living in Beijing, was persuaded by local officials to return to the town, and turn 50 vacant houses in Chujia, one of 89 villages encompassed by Dashuibo, into community spaces and second homes. Li brought 30 or so of his friends, most of whom work as designers, to the village.

“Like many designers, I have a dream of living in an idyllic house I designed,” said Zhao. “Besides, Li Jiutai is a very respected person in our field and I have known him for a long time. So I moved here at the end of 2019, after he made an open call to us,” she said.

 “Coming to this village, we are mindful of the fact that we are outsiders coming from the cities and probably disrupting their peaceful life. So we err on the side of courteous when interacting with the locals, bowing and being polite,” Zhao said.

She said it helped that many new residents would help connect farmers with potential buyers for their produce in cities, increasing their income.

The Dashuibo experiment is now in its second year, but observers have questioned whether it is economically viable and can stand the test of time.

“The project may lack a sustainable economic model,” said Yong He, founder and chief executive of MeetBest, a company that designs and operates event spaces in Shanghai. “What value is the project creating? Who are the beneficiaries?”

An architect himself, He participated in rural development in 2006 on the outskirts of Shanghai. He said it was important to judge a rural project‘s success on the economic model it created. Has it helped the rural area to sustain itself, create profitable industries and attract new talent on its own?

“If most rural areas in China are turned into vacation places for urbanites, then there won’t be enough demand to keep them going. We need to think outside of the vacation model,” said He.

Liu Hung-chih, senior vice-president of the Greater China region at AECOM, an international infrastructure design and engineering consulting firm, said he was “curious to see whether the projects will become part of the village’s own identity and industries or simply become short-term attractions”.

Liu said the creation of attractions was a common strategy in rural tourism development, but the success of any one project ultimately depended on whether its attractions could be of benefit to the locals.