Rural communities that were once condemned by departure of their young are seeing an upswing in popularity thanks to the vision of creative architects and the construction of new cultural spaces, Yang Yang reports. 

Urban life has too often sounded the death knell for tradition, especially the types of homes people live in. Villages have been depopulated in the rush by workers, mostly young people, the very lifeblood of any community, to the cities. Zhang Lei, a professor from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Nanjing University, wants to stop this by getting, as any good architect would, to the very foundations of the problem. Zhang's students are urged to go to the countryside to see old houses in traditional settlements and experience what is called "architecture without architects".

"For years, we had seen a lot of old villages dying slowly before being torn down. It's such a shame. So I wanted to do something," Zhang says.

Zhang's two design works for Librairie Avant-Garde, the Yunxi Library bookshop in Tonglu county's Daijiashan village and Chenjiapu Bookstore in Songyang county, both in East China's Zhejiang province, were opened respectively in 2015 and 2018. The villages have since seen an upswing in visitors.

Hostels have been built and, as a result, property prices in the villages have soared. For instance, the annual rent of a house in Daijiashan village was 2,000 yuan ($306) in 2015, but has now grown to 8,000 yuan.

Similarly, Chenjiapu village used to be a dying enclave despite a history stretching back 600 years. The bookstore, however, means that holidays bring so many visitors that there are often traffic jams on the road leading to the village.

"I never thought that a small bookstore could change the fate of a village," he says.

When Qian Xiaohua, founder of Librairie Avant-Garde headquartered in Nanjing, started opening bookstores in the countryside six years ago, he encountered a lot of doubts and questions. After all, bookstores in cities, with much bigger populations, could barely survive due to online competition.

Even more surprisingly, Qian prefers targeting old villages that are hemorrhaging their young people, with just the elderly and children left behind. Those villages are usually located in picturesque surroundings, many with historical details.

Qian, accompanied by architects, will then choose old buildings from the villages to be renovated into well-lit modern bookstores that remain true to their original structures and decorative aspects.

Since April 2014, Qian has opened five bookstores in the countryside. All have attracted large numbers of tourists and even young villagers to return home.

Apart from their commercial success and resultant economic revival of the villages, these bookstores have become new public spaces for locals, benefiting the development of rural areas in the long run.

Centers of attention

In ancient times, people in villages gathered in ancestral halls or temples. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, these became people's great halls, village halls, sometimes granaries and even clinics. But times have changed.

As a result, bookstores can play the role of a spiritual center where villagers and visitors can gather together, says Zhao Chen, an architecture professor from Nanjing University.

On May 1, the latest branch of Librairie Avant-Garde, Shaxi Bai Ethnic Bookstore, in Jianchuan county, Southwest China's Yunnan province, was opened.

Its sales in the last six months have surpassed those of 12 older branches.

Apart from general books, there are specialist works about local culture, geography and history, such as the Ancient Tea-Horse Caravan Route and Bai ethnic culture.

Once a deserted granary, the modern bookstore has welcomed a lot of grandmothers and mothers taking young children to read or just walk around, and sample the atmosphere, like relaxed visitors to a park. People do not consider it, primarily, as a commercial place. Some children go to the bookstore to do homework because they feel at ease in the space, says Huang Yinwu, architect of the bookstore.

"It does not only provide space for book selling, but also serves as a local library," says Xia Zhujiu, an architectural theorist.

"It's not only a bookshop, but a cultural education base that the business co-constructs with the local community. Qian also agrees that this is a way that bookstores can really help to revive ailing villages," Xia says.

For many architects, one of the most important reasons for accepting a contract is to see whether the building will be properly used in the future. This is certainly the case for Dong Gong, an architect who is going to design a new bookstore for Librairie Avant-Garde in Chengxiang ancient town located north of Chengdu, provincial capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province.

"We hope that the building can really contribute to social life, and be used for either private or public purposes, regardless of praise or criticism, so that we can feel it's real, not just there to be part of a published photo," Dong says.

Based on the original old buildings, architects need to find solutions to connect the old with the new and the rural with the urban.

Building connections

Architects prefer to use local materials, refer to the local traditional houses and hire local workers for renovation projects.

In Yunnan province, for example, construction workers are not professionals. They are farmers who work in the fields and only take on building work if new homes are required.

"It's a very traditional style of mutual assistance," says Hua Li, who designed the Xiadi Paddy Field Bookstore, a branch of Librairie Avant-Garde in East China's Fujian province.

Architecture in the countryside is often the fruit of people's wisdom accumulated over generations in a certain place. It is based on the knowledge of the local weather, natural resources and culture. One can learn a lot from the buildings by observing and understanding them, Hua says.

For example, in the ancient villages of East China's Anhui province, some details on the old houses are full of architectural clues, he adds.

The stairs connecting the ground to the second floor are divided into two parts. The first three steps are made of stone, followed by wooden steps. This is to prevent rising damp in late spring and summer.

There are many similar methods that we can borrow in traditional construction in modern design, Hua says.

For Zhang Lei, such bookstore projects in ancient villages build platforms that allow cities and the countryside to better communicate.

"Urban residents coming to the villages can see a better countryside through these projects, a different kind of nature," Zhang says. "Without these projects, visitors only experience the original village life, but with these projects, you can imagine a better future for rural areas."

In both Daijiashan and Chenjiapu villages, Zhang used local construction styles and materials to renovate the homes.

"Many local people in Daijiashan village borrowed our methods to build hostels. They might not necessarily think it beautiful, but they saw a better village through the bookstore," Zhang says.

"Villages need new ideas from the city, including aesthetic space, which, for villagers, is a new experience and offers enlightenment to a new lifestyle and different civilization.

"Such projects let people from both the city and the countryside see a better world and a better life, which is why these projects in the countryside matter so much."