New Village Grows on Ancient Fame

Huangxian Village is a rising star in rural Fenghua, as it is now widely known as its phenomenal economic growth and well-preserved ecology Located in the Xiangshan Bay in the middle point of the coastline of Zhejiang Province in eastern China, the village dates back to very an-cient times Village manager Lin Xiaoliang says the village is definitely more than 1,800 years old It is said that a hermit surnamed Huang retired to the village after he and his three hermit friends helped the crown prince of the Han Dynasty secure his position According to history, four wise sages retired to Mount Shangshan in Shaanxi Province when the Qin Dynasty was falling apart and warlords fought each other to grab power After Liu Bang founded the Han Dynasty, he wanted to dethrone his crown prince and nominate another son by another wife to succeed the throne in the future Worried about his position, the crown prince sought advice from Zhang Liang, a wise advisor who had helped Liu Bang defeat his archrival Xiang Yu Zhang Liang advised the crown prince to have the four sages as his assistants When the emperor saw his son with four sages, the emperor sighed and said the crown prince now had great help and it would not be wise to replace him

One of the four sages was Huang It is said that he later moved to Dali in eastern Zhejiang The village was named after him Nobody knows for sure whether the old sage really lived in the village and whether he was finally buried there, but the village has a tomb and a memorial temple in his name and honor Mount Shangshan around Huangxian Village resembles the description of its ancient counterpart in Shaanxi Province

Although it is questionable if the village was home to the ancient sage, another his-torical figure who was born in Huangxian sounds more plausible It is widely believed that Li Bu (967-1028), a hermit poet of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), was a native of Huangxian Village, although some history records say the great poet and hermit was a native of Hangzhou The poet was known for his 20-year-long reclusive life on the Solitary Hill on the West Lake and for his preeminent poems Unmarried all his life, the hermit wrote romantic poems and considered plum blossoms his wife and white cranes his children In de-picting plum blossoms at dusk in a poem, the poet says, “Their scattered shadows fall lightly on clear water; their subtle scent pervades the moonlit dusk” It is considered the best description of plum blossoms in Chinese poetry

In Huangxian Village are his former residence and an academy where he studied Chinese canon in his youth On the memo-rial temple compound towers an ancient fir, presumably planted by Lin Bu

Geographically, the village sits against mountains on three sides and faces the Xi-angshan Bay With about 400 households, Huangxian in 2004 built a 10-km2 forest park The village’s forest park is now des-ignated as a provincial forest park, the only forest park of its kind at village level in the province What makes the village special is a great wall that stretches through the woods In the early 21st century, villagers planned to build a network of fire belts through its lush woods, but the traditional fire belt was considered not suitable at all Trees would have to be felled in order to open up space for such swaths Lin Xiao-liang proposed to build a wall, which would double as a fire belt and a tourist attraction Villagers approved the proposal

The village has economically flourished over past 30 plus years Over the past 30 years, Huangxian has developed a strong village economy In fact, it is one of the best village economies in the whole Ningbo The village’s average per capita income is well above the average level of Ningbo The village now provides its residents with a great deal of welfares and benefits

The village’s three ten-year develop-ment blueprints have helped the village see where it goes, what it wants to achieve, and how it can accomplish its goals Resi-dential houses in the village are distinct testimony to the huge developments the village has witnessed The houses of the 1980s have blue-gray-tiled roofs The color has darkened over years The houses built in the1990s look like villas with red-tiled roofs Villagers are going to move into new houses with blue-tiled roofs These new houses are built to ensure every family has a new house and all the land resources are used most economically

Nowadays, Huangxian attracts tourists with the ten-square-kilometer forest park Households provide boarding and meals for visitors A village restaurant serves seafood