A photo taken on Aug 11, 2023 shows the village of Yucun in East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/Xinhua]

It is midsummer and the picturesque Yucun village in East China's Zhejiang province, featuring mountains covered in lush green bamboo, has drawn visitors from various parts of the country.

Booming tourism in the village of Anji county has delivered tangible benefits to the locals. "Last year, we received nearly 50,000 visitors. In the first half of this year, the number of visitors has increased by about 30 percent compared to the same period last year," said Pan Chunlin, a homestay owner.

During an inspection tour to Yucun on August 15, 2005, Xi Jinping, then secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, for the first time put forward the concept of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," which is the pillar of President Xi's thought on ecological civilization.

In June, China's top legislature designated Aug 15 as National Ecology Day, aiming to enhance public awareness and actions to protect the ecological environment.

Revisiting the small village offered an insight into how the concept came into being and how it has become a guiding principle for China's ecological development.

Growing pains

Summer is a very busy time, with buses transporting visitors to Yucun, located at the foot of a mountain in northern Zhejiang, for sightseeing tours on a daily basis.

These bustling scenes reminded 62-year-old villager Ge Yuande of life decades ago, when the village roads were full of tractors loaded with ores.

During the 1990s, Anji went through a period of breakneck economic development, which was pursued at all costs.

In Yucun village, Anji's largest limestone mining area, villagers enriched themselves by processing limestone into bricks and cement, and the annual income of the village once exceeded 3 million yuan ($414,400).

However, the mining industry took a heavy toll on the environment. The mountains turned bare, the water was polluted, and thousand-year-old ginkgo trees ceased to bear fruit.

"During that time, sewage flowed through the village, which was enveloped in smoke and dust throughout the year," said Ge, who worked as a miner. "Villagers always kept their windows shut and had no place to dry their laundry."

The challenges faced by Yucun also troubled Zhejiang at large. From the late 1970s to the early 2000s, Zhejiang's economy maintained an average annual growth rate of up to 13 percent, but this growth inflicted a heavy cost on the environment. There was a shortage of clean water, soil was severely polluted, and red tides frequently occurred near the coast.

With the painful lessons of environmental disasters in some Western countries in mind, policymakers in Zhejiang began to grapple with the conflict between protecting the ecological environment and accelerating economic growth.

Pursuing green development

In June 2003, Zhejiang initiated a province-wide rural green revival program to improve both the eco-environment of villages and rural residents' quality of life.

In a last-ditch attempt to save the deteriorating environment, officials in Yucun shut down the mining industry and cement factories. However, the move prompted an immediate decline in the village economy and locals' incomes.

Tang Zhongxiang, then head of the Anji county government, said the county, at the crossroads of development, was uncertain about its future growth path.

"On one hand, locals did realize that they could no longer sacrifice the environment and their own health in exchange for so-called wealth, but on the other hand, they were skeptical about whether lucid waters and lush mountains could bring them fortune," Tang said.

In August 2005, Xi visited Yucun. "It is a brilliant move for you to shut down the mines," he said during the visit.

"We used to say that we wanted both lucid waters and lush mountains, as well as mountains of gold and silver. In fact, lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of gold and silver," he added.

After the visit, Xi expounded the concept in a newspaper article. "We need to choose the right direction and create conditions to continuously turn lucid waters and lush mountains into mountains of gold and silver," he wrote.

Qian Kunfang, then Party chief of Anji, said Xi's emphasis on environmental protection had offered great encouragement for local officials to continue to pursue green development.