Hancunhe: A Model Suburban Village

Li Kai, a farmer in his 70s, lives in Hancunhe Village in Fangshan District of Beijing suburbs. He takes charge of guarding his old house near the 330-square-meter villa he now lives in and receives 260 yuan ($37.90) a month for the job. The old house of Li now serves as a museum to mirror the village life 30 years ago. His wife receives the same amount for cleaning a 20-meter section of the street in front of their house. Besides the 280 yuan ($40.23) basic monthly pension that the Beijing Municipal Government gives Li and his wife, they also receive an additional living allowance of 210 yuan ($30.17) a month from Hancunhe Village. With all the money the old couple receive each month, they can easily afford their living expenses.

Today Hancunhe Village has an annual per-capita income of 18,000 yuan ($2,586.21). But 30 years ago, the residents lived a totally different life, said Zhang Yu, a guide at the Beijing Hancunhe Tourism Development Co. In 1978, when China launched its reform and opening-up policy, the village's per-capita annual income was only 50 yuan ($7.18). But the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy set Hancunhe on a path to becoming a wealthy, model suburban village.

Li Dejiang, a 70-year-old villager who has seen many changes take place there over the last 30 years, said the only source of income for the 700 villagers before 1978 was some 90 hectares of farmland. Even in years with good harvests, the yield per hectare was only 2,250 kg. An able-bodied laborer could earn only 400 yuan ($57.72) a year at most.

Dirt poor

The houses in the village were poorly built, because only a few residents could afford adequate building materials. Ninety-nine percent of the houses were built with adobe, while only a few were constructed with stone blocks. Some houses were built at the base of slopes so that during the rainy season, it was difficult for villagers to walk to their houses, which were surrounded by puddles. About 10 percent of the houses could not keep out rain and wind.

"The villagers were getting poorer and poorer," Li told Beijing Review. At that time, he led a village production team and later served as the head of several factories and companies set up by the village, including the Beijing Hancunhe Tourism Development Co.

Also in 1978, Tian Xiong, a 32-year-old bricklayer from Hancunhe, organized a construction team of 30 workers from the village. With only basic tools, the construction crew mainly took on jobs such as building private homes and landslide and rockfall protection barriers in and around the county, Zhang said. In 1984, the construction team won a 200,000-yuan ($28,735.63) contract to build the Beijing Ziyu Hotel.

"The construction team got the first bucket of gold," Zhang said. The crew developed into the Beijing Hanjian Construction Group, which has an annual revenue of 3 billion yuan ($432.9 million).

Driven by the construction team, the village also established many factories to support the building industry, including a brick, structural component and carpentry factory and a gas station. These factories and companies collectively have an annual revenue of more than 30 million yuan ($4.31 million) and a 5-percent net profit, Li said. Many villagers in Hancunhe currently work for or previously worked for Hanjian or other village businesses.

To get rich is glorious

After the villagers got rich, they began to compete with one another in rebuilding houses.
But without uniform planning by the village, they laid out their houses at random, which caused several disputes, according to information in the Hancunhe Exhibition Hall. At that time, the streets piled up with dung and firewood. In 1990, Tian Xiong proposed leveling all the old houses and constructing a new modern village.

From 1993 to the end of 1998, Hancunhe built 581 villas, a five-story apartment building, an industrial park, a resort, two parks and an education center. It is the first modern village on the outskirts of Beijing, with a population of 2,700. Of the village's 910 households, 581 have moved into the villas, while the rest now live in apartment buildings, said Zhang. The villas were built in American, European or Chinese styles, with each having a floor space of 240-330 square meters. Each villa has a total building area of 600 square meters and a front yard. The apartments have a floor space of 80-140 square meters. Both the villas and apartment buildings are built of concrete and brick so they can withstand an 8.0-magnitude earthquake, Li said.

The houses were sold to villagers at a price of 400 yuan ($57.47) per square meter. Moreover, every household received a 30,000-yuan ($4,310.34) incentive from the village to move into the new home. At last, villagers paid only about 30 percent of the construction costs.

The village also provides social welfare for its residents. Every year it pays 80 yuan ($11.49) per villager for health insurance, making the insurance cover 70 percent of their medical expenses, Zhang said. There are a township hospital and a village hospital in the locality with a total of 120 beds and more than 20 doctors and nurses.

In addition, every villager can get a free supply of 150 kg of flour every year and half a ton of tap water each month. Every disabled villager receives an annual subsidy of 720 yuan ($103.45). The village also offers jobs such as cleaners to those who are physically capable of working.

"Only if they are not bedridden and want to do something, all the villagers can get jobs," said Zhang.

In recent years, Hancunhe has diversified its main industry, switching from construction to real estate. Hanjian has had two real estate projects under construction in Beijing, according to Zhang. In 2005, the Heshan Pipeline Co., which is affiliated with Hanjian, won a 556 million-yuan ($79.89 million) contract to manufacture a prestressed concrete cylinder pipe for the 25-km Fangshan section of China's South-to-North Water Diversion Project. The village factories provide all the materials for the project.

As a model of new countryside construction and a modern village, Hancunhe receives more than 300,000 visitors every year, which adds about 10 million yuan ($1.44 million) to the villagers' income, Zhang said.