Huang cun, situated in the most beautiful county in China – Wuyuan. Though the village is like a haven of peace and happiness, Huang cun is rather isolated and lacks organized tourism development plan. Other hand, its neighboring village, Likeng, which is merely famous for a first Confucian school, seems to attract all the attention and obtains a noticeably different amount of tourists and the income from the tourists.
In fact, Huang cun has the same breath-taking landscape and the same elegant Huizhou style architecture. However, when people in Likeng started doing guided tours and opening up restaurants in their village, young people from Huang cun still had no choice but go working in big cities and leaving behind the elderly and children. Huang cun was also famous for its tea once, but that no longer brings in much income with the constantly plunge of tea price in the recent years. It is said that these years, the forest in the mountains was overexploited just so that people in Huang cuu can manage the minimum.
Mr. YU Duo-fu from Huang cun is more than 70 years old. He dreams to turn Huan cuu into a historical site like Lieng, and thereby improve the living conditions in the village, including renovating their heritage sites. So he volunteered to be the head of the village's tourism development committee. He heard that internet will get more people to know about his village, but only after he inquired their county tourism office, he realized that the advertisement commission for a year would cost a fortune. The following months, Mr YU Duo-fu disregarded the weather and went around highways connected to his village, with a paintbrush and some paint with him to write on walls “to Huang cun →”. In the long holidays that followed, flocks of tourists surprisingly turned up in Huang cuu, because they saw the signposts.
It's been two years since then. The signposts YU painted are all weather beaten and some are even blocked by new buildings. One can just about to tell the vague attempt of the village's tourism business by the wooden signboard at the entrance of the village, saying “Admission Fee: 20 yuan each”. Huang cun is too isolated and the bumpy roads just make it even more difficult for large vehicles, let along being inviting enough to any professional tourism planner to invest on infrastructure. YU Duo-fu now can only hopes that one day some rich man would come develop Huan cuu, like the way someone invested Likeng. He feels that only money can make things better.
To go to Huang cun from the county station, you need to make a transfer in Qinghua. Qinghua is where WU Dong-qing lives. WU Dong-qing is a teacher in a local middle school. He loves traveling and photography. He even single handedly set up a website about traveling information in Wuyuan and often answers questions from his online friends. After gaining some reputation on the internet, WU Dong-qing followed suggestions by his friends and opened a hostel just based on his own house. He named his hostel “post house” and aimed to make friends with local visitors and exchange travel experiences. Because of this, some tourists even gives up th opportunity of staying in better spots, just to come stay in his place in Qinghua.
Compared to Likeng, Huang cun does not have location, and neither financial resources; compared to WU Dong-qing, YU Duo-fu lack education and tools for communication. However, are they destined to lose?
Director: GUO Zi-dong
Born in Shanghai, GUO is now pursuing his Master’s degree of Art at the College of Communication and Arts, TongjiUniversity. He has made some short documentaries, including “Mr Jiang” and “March 3rd”.
From the Director
I visited Huang cun two years ago and met Mr. YU Duo-fu. Mr. YU hoped to improve people’s life in his village by developing the tourism of Huang cun. Certainly, he took action and his perseverance touched me overwhelmingly. I felt his helplessness but I felt even stronger of his hope. The process of one pursuing his dream must be so powerful and just so appealing that I know right then that I want to film his story.
Huang cun is an area forgotten by the tourism industry and YU Duo-fu, who is responsible for receiving tourists in the village committee, hopes that one day Huang cun can become a village famous for a historical Confucian school, like Likeng. However, he slowly finds that this seemingly reachable dream is yet so far.
WU Dong-qing from Qinghua is a middle school teacher and transformed his house to a family hostel a few years ago. He likes surfing on the internet and loves photography. He has made lots of friends across China and even have visitors just come to stay for the sake of him.
Personally I want the film to disclose a common feature in the development of tourism in the rural areas in China, that is, villages that appear to be rather similar may receive totally different development bias by an favorability resulted from level or intensity of promotion. Some remote villages might become well-known overnight, rendering the villagers wealthy, whereas most of those villages are unknown to the outside world with poor people still living in hardship.
