Tieniu Village铁牛村

Tieniucun sits in Xilai township, Pujiang County, on the Chengdu Plain — an ordinary citrus-growing village. Around 2016, like many villages in western Sichuan, it had lost most of its working-age population to outside jobs. The turning point came from two people who came back or moved in: in 2016 He Xiaocheng gave up migrant work to raise mandarin fish in the village, then founded its first rural-tourism cooperative in 2018; in 2017 a city transplant named Ye Ke leased a 9-mu orchard and began growing citrus without chemical pesticides or fertilizer, running regular farming lectures for locals. Since then, more professionals — architects, designers, biology PhDs, counselors — have kept arriving from over 20 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, spanning four generations from the 1960s-born to the 1990s-born. Today more than 50 live here full-time, another 300-plus commute back and forth, alongside the village's 3,600-some longtime residents. The old village-committee building was converted into a community hall called Choumei Shenghuo Guan ("Beautiful-Ugly Life Hall"); the government supplied six subsidized talent apartments at a 50% rent discount for ten years, and the village worked out a "4343" governance model splitting responsibilities across government, village collective, enterprise and social organizations. State media outlets including Xinhua and the Beijing Daily have covered it as one of the country's watch-worthy "future village" experiments.

New-Resident Experiment

50-plus new residents, spanning four generations, putting down roots in the countryside

• New residents have arrived from over 20 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen — architects, designers, biology PhDs, counselors and former media professionals among them
• The government supplied six subsidized talent apartments, at a 50% rent discount for ten years, lowering the bar for a long-term move
• The village worked out a "4343" governance model — four items for government, three for the village collective, four for enterprise, three for social organizations
• Chief planner Shi Guoping, a returnee architect (an architecture master's from UCLA and a licensed US architect), has been rooted in Tieniucun for nearly a decade

Chuanxi Linpan Farmstead

Bamboo-shaded farmhouses, with fish ponds and orchards running into one another

• Tieniucun keeps the classic Chuanxi "linpan" settlement pattern — bamboo groves, courtyards, fish ponds and farmland enclosing each homestead
• Orchards and fish ponds together cover thousands of mu across the village — citrus and freshwater aquaculture carry equal weight here
• The converted village-committee building, now the community hall, sits tucked inside one such linpan courtyard
• Outdoor events like the pine-forest concerts are usually set in the open ground between the orchards and bamboo groves

Ugly Citrus & Mandarin Fish

Adopt a tree, and taste the first citrus that's genuinely yours

• The eco-grown citrus, locally nicknamed "ugly citrus," is grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizer and ripens roughly December through March
• The orchard runs an "adoption" program — about one yuan a day makes you an "orange mom or dad," with a personal ID tag hung on your tree
• One of the village's fish farmers, He Xiaocheng, produces over 40,000 jin of mandarin fish a year, worth more than ¥1.6 million
• Pujiang County is also a well-known kiwifruit-growing area — kiwi and citrus together anchor the local fruit economy