Yangpo Village Bookstore: A Cultural Beacon Rising from China’s Mountains
There are many similarities between India and China, rooted in millennia-old interactions between the two Asian neighbours. Perhaps the most striking, but least discussed, resemblance is between Yunnan, China’s southwestern province, and India’s Northeast.
Yunnan’s geographical features, its folklore, music, dance, social customs, the facial appearance of its people, and their traditional attire – not to speak of its breathtaking beauty – exhibit a lot of similarity with our own northeastern states.
Like Manipur, Assam and the rest of the “Seven Sisters”, Yunnan is a kaleidoscope of ethnic diversity. The Yi, Bai, Hani, Dai, Zhuang, Miao, Hui, Lisu, Lahu, Wa, Naxi and other ethnic minorities in Yunnan have much in common with the ethnic communities in our Northeast. The Ahom dynasty, which ruled present-day Assam for nearly 600 years, was a descendant of the Tai race that migrated from Yunnan province.
Yunnan also has its own version of the Ramayana, known as Langka Sip Hor, which is popular among the Dai people in the province. It has many Sanskrit and Pali words, and the epic has undergone some adaptation to suit the environment of Yunnan.
The province does not share a border with India, but the Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture – prefecture in China is an administrative district – in Yunnan shares a long border with Myanmar, which in turn shares a border with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.
Until eight years ago, Nujiang was one of the three poorest rural regions in China. Today, like the rest of China, it is a picture of eye-catching prosperity. How did it achieve this dramatic transformation?
The answer came to me most unexpectedly on the day I arrived in Lushui, a small town in Nujiang, in late March. I had come here to participate in an international conference, the Nujiang Forum, on how the Global South can eradicate poverty through mutual learning. A four-hour flight from Beijing to Dali in Yunnan, followed by a three-hour car drive from Dali to Lushui, had left me exhausted. I needed to loosen up my limbs and refresh my mind in the open air.
So I went for a leisurely walk on a promenade along River Nujiang behind the hotel where many international delegates like me were staying. Nothing about this breathtakingly beautiful promenade, packed with tourists, suggested it was a very poor and bare area just a decade ago.
The local government, as part of its anti-poverty campaign, had decided to relocate the poor living in the nearby mountains. It built large high-rise housing communities in Lushui and other towns, with schools, hospitals, playgrounds and community centres, and persuaded them to move here. The people needed jobs. Among the many job-creating economic activities the government identified was tourism. Nujiang, with its lush green mountains, lucid rivers and clean air, had many tourist attractions. Hence, the town received a gift – a long riverfront promenade lined with dozens of brightly shining shops, restaurants and hotels, including a Hilton.
China’s ‘magic bullet’
Nujiang occupies a special place in China’s anti-poverty campaign. In 2013, soon after Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) — and later President — he announced an ambitious mission to eradicate extreme poverty nationwide by the end of 2020. This goal was eventually achieved across the country, including in Yunnan province, which had 8 million poor people out of a population of 48 million in 2012.
However, Nujiang proved to be one of the most challenging regions to transform. With more than 98 percent of its terrain covered in high mountain canyons and dense forests, and nearly 80 percent of its land sloping at gradients above 25 degrees, development efforts were exceptionally difficult. The poverty rate in Nujiang was more than nine times higher than the national average, making it a critical focus for the anti-poverty initiative.
A majority of the people lacked proper food, clothing and shelter. They seldom ate rice, and survived on forest produce. Their scattered hamlets were inaccessible. They trekked in deep valleys and snowy mountains on foot, using sky ladders and ropeways with bamboo strips, and crossed rivers on primitive canoes. Their nomadic economic activities were limited to slash-and-burn farming and hunting. Efforts to improve the living conditions had been going on since the 1980s when China embarked on a path of economic reforms. But progress was slow.
Xi Jinping’s mandate was that “no poor ethnic community should be left behind, and no poor person should be left behind”.
The number of poor people in Nujiang was small compared to China’s 1.4 billion population – only around 300,000. The “magic bullet” that ensured the success of “Garibi Hatao” in China and especially in places like Nujiang was the policy of “targeted poverty eradication”. The government mandated that every poor family in the country be individually identified and the specific cause and extent of its poverty be carefully investigated. Thereafter, the family was “targeted” with a plan tailor-made for it to be lifted out of poverty.
This strategy is premised on the fact that poverty can have many root causes, such as illness, disability, poor infrastructure, weak market connectivity, lack of education and employable skills or shortage of production funds. These call for differentiated solutions for different individuals and areas. Accurate identification of the causes of poverty for each family was regarded as the critical “first button”. If the “first button” in a shirt is not fastened properly, the remaining buttons are bound to get fastened wrong — an initial mistake could render families to slip back into poverty later.
The goal of poverty eradication had to be achieved by ensuring “One Income, Two Assurances, and Three Guarantees”. Besides facilitating employment for income, the government assured food security and clothing, and guaranteed basic medical services, safe housing with drinking water and electricity, and free and compulsory education for nine years. For ethnic minorities such as those in Yunnan – 25 out of 55 ethnic minorities in China live here – free education is guaranteed for 15 years.Education in China at all levels – from kindergarten to universities – is mostly provided by government-run institutions.
The entire machinery of the government and communist party was mobilised for the campaign, from the top to the bottom. Five levels of communist party secretaries and government officials had to work together – provincial, municipal, county, township and village. At the village level, every poor household had a contact official in charge of poverty elimination. The official was a member of the Village Task-Force, which had the responsibility to analyse the cause of poverty in each poor household, assess their specific needs; make suitable development plans with the active involvement of the households; and coordinate assistance and resources from higher authorities.
Committed party workers were sent to work and live in remote villages and hamlets for two or three years, sometimes longer. Each cadre was required to build “family” relationships with people assigned to them, and see that the benefits of the poverty eradication programme actually reached the targeted families. Random third-party evaluations were conducted regularly.
Businesses, universities, mass media and other civil society entities were given specific responsibilities as part of an integrated plan focused on helping build local industries and create sustainable employment opportunities.
Each poor family had its own digital file in the national database. A national and provincial information platform created for real-time monitoring of poverty alleviation kept track of the progress of each targeted family and village. The Beijing-based International Poverty Reduction Centre in China (IPRCC) conducted meticulous research of the Chinese experience, and shared it with global audiences.
The effort came to be known as the “Second Long March”, in a nod to the10,000-km Long March undertaken by the Mao Zedong-led CPC in 1934-1935 during the Chinese Civil War.
In a clear message to the party and government that complete eradication of poverty was his personal priority, Xi himself has visited nearly a hundred villages in poor and remote areas of China in the past 13 years. He emphasised that the success of the poverty eradication programme can only be judged by the poor. “The times set the question papers. We answer the papers and the people are paper marker,” he said in a speech. Other members of the politburo and provincial leaders of the communist party also go on regular “inspection tours”.
After the goal of eradication of extreme poverty was achieved by the end of 2020, China has launched a new programme – rural revitalisation. This aims to consolidate the gains of poverty alleviation, achieve greater productivity in agriculture, develop specialty industries in rural areas supported by modern technologies and locally trained talent, and promote greater rural-urban integration. It prioritizes the use of renewable energy, protection of the intangible cultural heritage of the countryside, and further improvement in the living standards of the rural people.
Focus on sustainable employment
Xi ordered that the “targeted” poverty eradication programme, in order to be effective and sustainable, must be based on creation of employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. He took the position that handouts, except in the case of deserving citizens – such as the aged and the disabled with no family support – would make people lazy, and render them vulnerable to relapse into poverty.
Infrastructure development has played a key role in transforming the economic and social life in Nujiang. A new airport, expressway, highway, bridges, energy pipelines, solar farms and water transport facilities have been built. Travel time to remote areas is drastically reduced – Yang Wenwen, my Chinese guide who works in the finance department of the Nujiang local government, said that in some cases it has been cut from over 24 hours to just 10 minutes.
Digital technology has enabled local villagers to sell agricultural products and handicrafts to markets across China via booming e-commerce platforms, such as Taobao and Jingdong, Pinduoduo. Through live-streaming apps and short video platforms like Wechat, Tiktok and Kuaishou, the government promotes local scenery and industries, while farmers market goods and tourism services.
The programme of our conference included a field visit to Nujiang Green Spice Industrial Park, built by China Communications Construction Company as part of its ‘CSR’ contribution to the anti-poverty mission. The park featured tsaoko cultivation and processing. Amomum tsaoko is a cardamom spice plant that grows abundantly in the forests of Nujiang, but brought no benefit to the villagers in the past.
A decade ago, Yunnan Agriculture University and private enterprises teamed up to produce a wide range of tsaoko-based innovative products – medicines, beverages, cosmetics, seasoning spices, cookies and so on – all nicely packaged and sold all over China. The new approach involves a full industrial chain approach, focusing on large-scale planting, standardised cultivation and hi-tech harvesting and processing. Since transportation is difficult in mountains, drones are used to transport the tsaoko harvest – up to 50 kilograms over three kilometres in just four minutes – to processing workshops.
Thus, tsaoko has proved to be a “golden fruit”, causing a ten-fold increase in farmers’ incomes. Nujiang has become the largest tsaoko planting area in China. Many different kinds of honey and a wide variety of walnut-based products, including walnut juice, are produced in the park and over 140 species of aromatic plants used in edible and healthcare products have been introduced here.
Like Assam, Yunnan grows both tea and coffee. While Assam has focused only on branding its tea, Yunnan has developed both its tea and coffee industries in a big way and now accounts for 98% of China’s total coffee production.
Relocating the poor
Perhaps the most striking evidence of the success of China’s anti-poverty programme is the large-scale relocation of impoverished families from remote, mountainous areas to modern multi-storied apartment complexes in urban settings. We visited one such residential community that featured wide, well-paved roads and a beautifully landscaped park. The community also included a spacious centre for the elderly — many of whom live alone as their children have migrated to larger cities — where meals are provided for those unable to cook for themselves.
The facilities didn’t stop there. The community boasted a well-equipped clinic, a library, a children’s play area, and even a grievance redressal centre to handle local concerns. In front of the centre stood a large open-air theatre used for cultural events and recreation. Nearby, at an industrial estate, hundreds of women were employed in a factory producing baseballs and other sports goods destined for export to countries like Korea and Japan.
Not far from the community centre is a government-run primary and secondary school, with digital classrooms and well-equipped science laboratories, an arts and crafts workshop, and a special hall for teaching English. Most students in this school were from ethnic minority families. Students use AI to correct their English pronunciation. The method that helps them is interesting: The software provides a sentence, the student reads it aloud, and the software scores their pronunciation and points out the incorrect words.
After visiting this colony where the poor have been provided free housing, I was reminded of a poem in a Chinese government book on its anti-poverty campaign. Recitation of the poem by Du Fu, an eighth century sage-poet from the Tang Dynasty, is compulsory for Chinese school students. Titled ‘My thatched hut was torn apart by autumn wind’, it laments the condition of the poor in those times. Here are some lines from the poem:
Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles,
I’d house all poor people and make them beam with smiles.
In wind and rain these mansions would stand like mountains high.
Alas! Should these houses appear before my eye,
Frozen in my unroofed cot, content I’d die.
Rural tourism
No country in the world has developed rural tourism as a conscious strategy for poverty eradication the way China has. In the first quarter of 2024, China’s rural areas received over 780 million tourists. Nujiang itself is an example. City-dwellers from Yunnan and other provinces are attracted to its secluded and scenic spots, its spectacular landscapes and the rich cultural heritage of its multi-ethnic communities. Over 50,000 people in Nujiang have found employment opportunities in tourism and related industries.
Dr. Li Xiaoyun, a renowned professor at the Beijing-based China Agriculture University and a keynote speaker at the conference, highlighted the pivotal role of rural tourism in China’s poverty eradication and rural revitalisation strategy. He emphasized that enhancing agricultural production and integrating it into the full value chain of agri-industrialisation has been a key driver of increased incomes for farmers. “We have achieved considerable success in this,” he noted.
Dr. Li stressed that the approach goes beyond economics. “Our strategy is more holistic,” he said. “Rural people should feel proud that they are living a new life with all the necessary amenities and are not cut off from China’s prosperous urban society.” He explained that rural tourism plays a vital role in this transformation by encouraging the development of modern infrastructure and clean, eco-friendly features while preserving the unique cultural identity of Chinese villages.
Li has implemented more than 50 rural tourism projects, and won many national awards for transforming remote and poverty-stricken villages in Yunnan and other provinces.
In a conversation with me, Li, said:
The rapid modernisation of China over the past four decades has triggered large-scale migration from rural villages to urban centers. This urban prosperity has led to the rise of not just the urban wealthy but also a substantial urban middle class. Despite their modern lifestyles, many of these individuals retain vivid memories of their upbringing—and their parents’ lives—in the countryside. They feel a strong emotional pull to reconnect with their rural roots.
Now that they have the financial means, these urban dwellers are increasingly choosing to spend weekends and holidays in villages. Often, they bring their children along to share stories about family heritage and the broader history of rural China. This growing trend reflects the deep cultural value placed on family and community in China, institutions that remain as foundational there as they are in India.
I could not help seeing parallels with the rapidly changing society in India. India’s villages, including those in north-eastern states, do not lack attractions for domestic and foreign tourists. Availability of necessary and authentic information online, cleanliness, connectivity, comfortable inns and bed-and-breakfast facilities, safety and security, people trained in hospitality, and encouragement to local private entrepreneurs to invest would go a long way in developing rural tourism in India.
An iconic village bookstore
In India, poverty eradication is understood only in terms of lifting people above a certain income-based poverty line. What is mostly overlooked is whether families that officials claim are no longer poor have access to good housing, good schools, good healthcare, clean water and sanitation, sports and recreation facilities, cultural centres, museums, libraries and so on. These essential parameters of the quality of life hardly ever figure in the debate or policy formulation on ‘Garib Kalyan’, a phrase popularised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in India.
China’s anti-poverty strategy is holistic. It has not only raised incomes, but has also comprehensively improved their quality of life. I got a glimpse of this when I visited Yangpo, a village located high up on the Gaoligong mountain range, some of whose peaks rise over 5,000 metres. The serpentine road from Lushui to Yangpo had 36 sharp bends that only the most experienced and strong-hearted drivers can navigate.
Yangpo, remote and inaccessible, was steeped in poverty about a decade ago. The local government upgraded all the houses with its funds, keeping their traditional look intact. The villagers were supported to build extra rooms to accommodate tourists. Some were given loans to build comfortable inns, restaurants and shops, all in the traditional rustic style. An open-air theatre was created for a village band to perform and entertain tourists. The result: the village has developed a thriving B&B industry. Hundreds of tourists come here each day for an experience that harmonises the natural beauty of mountains with the traditional culture of Yunnan.
But not everything in Yangpo is traditional. What caught my eye was something strikingly contemporary at the entrance of the village. On top of one of the mountain ridges, overlooking a valley framed by two hills sacred to the Lisu and Bai ethnic groups, stood a spectacularly modern building. I asked Yang Wenwen, my Chinese guide, what it was. “It is the Nujiang Grand Canyon Bookstore established by Librairie Avant-Garde,” she told me.
The building indeed has an avant-garde look, with two large triangular-shaped concrete blocks perched atop a three-level viewing deck that juts out from a steep mountain slope. As I descended a flight of stairs, I found myself in front of its cave-like entrance. Inside was a modern bookstore that could rival the best in any major city. The collection featured books—primarily in Chinese, but also in English—spanning a wide range of subjects including arts and culture, history, science and technology, and local ethnic traditions. Works by international literary giants like Rabindranath Tagore, Hermann Hesse, and Franz Kafka sat alongside those by local authors.
The bookstore wasn’t just a place to browse and buy books; it also had a café, an auditorium, a reading room, and open-air spaces where readers could enjoy books while seemingly floating among the clouds. Although the building’s design was undeniably modern, I was told that its inspiration is deeply rooted in tradition. The two triangular blocks represent crossbows and arrows, the ancient weapons used by the local Lisu ethnic group, which have since become cultural totems symbolizing their heritage.
Librairie Avant-Garde is a chain of independent bookstores-cum-public-libraries in China. It was selected by the BBC as one of the 10 most beautiful bookstores in the world. It is founded by Qian Xiaohua, a Nanjing-based cultural entrepreneur. All his bookstores are marked by architecture that is stunningly unique. He has opened many in rural China, especially in places with picturesque surroundings and historical significance.
Why open bookstores in villages when even those in cities are having a hard time due to online competition? Here is how Qian Xiaohua explained his business philosophy in an interview to China Daily. “A good bookstore is a constructive power that pushes society’s progress. It should provide space, vision and nurture the people with its humanitarian spirit. I feel books have a life. Running a bookstore is like working as a doctor, saving people’s souls and lives. For books, I always have a kind of reverence, just like for life.”
As in India, many old Chinese villages are also facing the problem of young people migrating to cities for work, leaving the elderly and children behind. Librairie Avant-Garde is an audacious attempt to revitalise rural life, enrich village culture, and also attract urban people to the countryside.
In Yangpo, the bookstore was designed by Hua Li, the founder and principal architect of TAO, a Beijing-based design studio. Curious about what led him to such a remote village in Yunnan, I asked him in an email interview: “What inspired you to go to a remote village in Yunnan and conceptualise a bookstore there?” His response was thoughtful and deeply personal.
“As an architect, I’ve long felt a special connection with western Yunnan. I have a deep bond with the land and its culture,” he wrote. “What draws me again and again to this part of China is its powerful sense of place — the uniqueness of its topography and the ways in which local culture has grown in dialogue with the environment. From the outset, the site possessed a quiet but profound presence. This kind of authenticity and intimacy is becoming increasingly rare in modernized urban contexts.”
“At the same time,” Hua Li, who studied at Tsinghua and Yale universities, said, “Nujiang was undergoing significant transformations as part of China’s broader rural revitalization and poverty alleviation efforts. Many villages in mountainous areas had been relocated to more accessible valleys due to harsh living conditions. Yet, we saw in Yangpo an opportunity for a different approach — one that didn’t depend on relocation, but instead sought to bring new vitality into the village from within, through cultural investment.”
By collaborating with Librairie Avant-Garde, Hua Li hoped “to plant a seed for long-term change — and the impact has surpassed expectations. Since my first visit in 2021, Yangpo has transformed from a typical rural village into a more vibrant community, with younger residents returning from cities to open guesthouses and restaurants. The village no longer feels left behind. More importantly, the bookstore is quietly shaping a cultural shift: local children now spend weekends browsing books, forming memories that may influence their lives for years to come. The project has grown beyond architecture — it has become part of the village’s living fabric.”
Explaining his professional philosophy, Hua Li said, “I think the constant in architecture is that you always need to design with your heart. Architecture is not just about dealing with functions. Only those buildings that touch you at a spiritual level will last and their core will never change. I would like my architecture to be timeless, to be able to withstand the challenges of time.”
What India should learn
As I embarked on a return journey from Lishui to Mumbai, I wondered: What is the one image that most strikingly symbolises “Modernisation with Chinese Characteristics”, a phrase one routinely comes across in debates about China these days? The answer, incontestably, was the mountain-top bookstore in Yangpo village.
Foreigners visiting China generally associate the country’s modernisation with the glistening airports and railway stations that are the largest in the world, sleek bullet trains that are the fastest in the world, and mesmerising skyscrapers in Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing and other Chinese cities that are among the tallest in the world. At night, these skyscrapers put up a dazzling show of lights, the likes of which one rarely sees in other global cities. But I do not regard these as the only stories of China’s modernisation.
There are other, more inspiring, stories of modern China. These are told by places like Nujiang. The symbol of transformation here is the bookstore perched in sublime seclusion on the slope of the ageless Gaoligong mountain, overlooking the vast expanse of a valley below where the meandering Nujiang river flows into the Andaman Sea. If the sacred mountain knows how its inhabitants suffered in the past, the equally sacred bookstore, which treasures knowledge from around the world, today stands as a proud messenger of how an ancient civilisation has cast off the shackles of the past and is revitalising itself with the power of modern technologies and a modern outlook.
Our northeastern states, as well as the rest of India, can learn a lesson or two from China’s modernisation.
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