The Xisai Mountainside Wooden Villa Hotel in Miaoxi town, Huzhou, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The opening of the Xisai Mountainside Wooden Villa Hotel in Miaoxi town, Huzhou, East China's Zhejiang province in 2016 has not just transformed the landscape but also the lives of the people living around it.

Among those who have benefitted is Chen Yongqing.

Five years ago, Chen was still toiling in the fields. Today, the woman is the supervisor of the hotel's reception and earns significantly more than her days as a farmer. In fact, she can even afford a car which she uses to travel to work.

Nestled among dense bamboo forests, the hotel Chen works for is funded by a company based in Jiaxing, another city in Zhejiang. Nearly 95 percent of its employees are locals.

Chen is just one example of how the green development strategy adopted by the Huzhou government has been improving the lives of those living in the rural areas.

Ying Jiena, director of operations at the hotel, pointed out that Miaoxi's well-preserved environment is the prime reason behind the company's decision to build the hotel in the town.

Huzhou's environmental quality has been improving steadily in recent years, according to official statistics.

The PM2.5 concentration in Huzhou's urban area dropped from 42 micrograms per cubic meter in 2017 to 25 micrograms per cubic meter in 2021, a decrease of 40.5 percent.

According to Zhang Xuanmeng, a local official, Huzhou has taken just five years to achieve what Western developed countries could in decades, referring to the reduction in PM 2.5 levels.

Over the same period, the percentage of days in a year with good air quality in the city rose from 68.5 percent to 84.4 percent.

The public's satisfaction rate toward ecological environment quality also increased from 81.7 percent in 2017 to 87.24 percent in 2021, according to a recent survey.