Qingshan Village is in Yuhang, Hangzhou, an hour and a half by road from the city. Its six hundred households have been running a field experiment in Chinese rural sustainability since 2014: nature education, designers in residence, permaculture design and regenerative agriculture, tried one after another.
Its best-known project is the Rong Design Library, which files the materials and techniques of traditional craft into a searchable archive that resident designers use for contemporary work. In one courtyard you can see how a bamboo weaving pattern becomes a piece of modern furniture.
We work with Qingshan Village, and every Hangzhou itinerary includes half a day here: a look at China's first rural nature school, the work of several resident designers, and a genuinely natural-farmed lunch — vegetables pulled from the garden that morning.
Qingshan is not a scenic spot; it is a long-term project still in progress. Precisely for that reason it is more honest than any model village.
Public transport to Qingshan is not convenient, so hiring a car or driving is advisable — about an hour and a half from the city. Visits need to be arranged in advance; do not simply walk into the village, because it is first of all the villagers' home and only then an experimental site.