PengRun's words:
In recent years, rural revitalization has once again become a "hot word", from the comprehensive rural development model such as pastoral complexes and characteristic town parks, to the integration of culture and tourism, sports and tourism, agriculture and tourism, and many other practical cases. Some projects have strong attractive characteristics and mature project development of the whole chain, which has obtained good market response and development prospects; However, due to the lack of understanding of the essence of rural revitalization policies, insufficient understanding of villages, farmers, agricultural industries, etc., and vague understanding of the consumer market, many projects have entered the investment misunderstanding, and their development is ultimately far from the original intention of rural revitalization. How should investors strike a balance between urban and rural areas? Pengrun hopes that this article can provide some inspiration for investors who want to enter the "hotel + rural revitalization".
The quiet village, sprinkled with golden sunshine, planting farmhouse vegetables on the side of the country road, walking past the door of the two old women who are laughing and choosing vegetables, not far away, a large black wooden door suddenly appeared.
Please enter the hospital with a normal heart", seeing the sentence at the door, I consciously recited it silently, and when I pushed it away, I found that it was a "misunderstanding".
It was a weekday, and it was an unknown small village 80 kilometers away from Chengdu, and it was very lively. People sit around in twos and threes, talking and laughing but not making noise, two Bichons and a poodle are "fighting".
This place is called the "Misunderstanding Garden", and it was originally the house of the owner's hometown. So those who, like him, choose to return to live in a small place in their hometown, have become digital nomads and realize the "fire life"? (fire: financial independence and retiring early. ）
Only 15 people are accepted per day, and reservations must be made 2-3 days in advance, and some unbooked guests are rejected. Some netizens said that it was "over-packaging", and some people came to admire it but commented that "this is completely rural", but Koko didn't care.
The courtyard was not large, and it was taken care of by Koko and his mother, who just wanted to provide better hospitality under limited conditions.
Do we have any misunderstanding here?
City people who have returned to their hometowns to heal.
Keko, like countless college students, has struggled with the anxiety of graduate school entrance examination and life. He studied **, but later decided to give up his major, return to his hometown, and have a place where he could heal himself, so he had a misunderstanding of the courtyard, and "after meeting his own needs, he will open it to the public." ”
Returning to the township and the mountains is not an isolated case. Plan B, which was once thought to be "unsurvivable in the city", has instead become a confident choice. And returning home is not the same as becoming a "superfluous person", lying down completely. A guest once commented that Koko is a "hard worker", he doesn't like the background of this word to make money and survive, but he is seen to accept serious life and stick to what he loves.
In late spring, in the courtyard of misunderstanding Photo: Zou Zou.
Koko in the Courtyard of Misunderstanding **Courtesy of Koko.
In the hottest two months of 2021, Koko's family of three (he and his parents) designed and renovated the idle utility room in the township, and the low-rise self-built house was transformed into a fresh courtyard, like Yu Dafu's "wind and rain thatched house", which became a spiritual home occupied by himself.
Koko recorded the renovation process on Moments and Xiaohongshu, sharing the life and mood changes in the yard. More and more people with the same emotional experience as Koko are getting together, and because of this, the customers attracted by the misunderstanding courtyard are not only from the surrounding area, "There are many customers from other places who come to seek an answer to their own salvation." ”
Summer in the Courtyard **Courtesy of Koko.
Why does the misunderstanding garden have a strong emotional resonance? Maybe it's because it's a true portrayal of Koko's reshaping of his inner order and exploring life in the way he likes. It's not just a yard, it's a place to heal itself.
This also explains why today's commercial spaces actively provide high emotional concentration, can match personal orientation, and match lifestyle pursuits, and cannot be built with a set of rules**.
For example, why is the courtyard a continuation of the traditional living aesthetics, a tranquility hidden in the city, a fireworks for neighbors, and a healing place for modern youth? If we analyze the process of renovating the courtyard by misunderstanding, I think tolerance and freedom will be the answer.
Tips for self-built houses:
Gaiwa in the middle of the night, change clothes in the peak season.
Koko is a person with strong executive skills, which can be seen from his rich entrepreneurial experience. I have opened **, done micro-business, coffee shop, milk tea shop ......If he wanted to do it, he did it immediately, and the renovation of the self-built house was quickly implemented.
Dad, as the main force in the renovation of the old courtyard, demolished and rebuilt it little by little according to Koko's design ideas. Knock down the redundant partition wall in the room, add a small door to enter the courtyard, and add a corridor outside the bathroom to form a hidden partition, so that the misunderstanding courtyard covering an area of 200 square meters has more space to explore without changing the main body of the old house.
The explorable sense of the new students in the old courtyard Photo: Zou Zou.
White walls and green tiles, and then spread out with fine bamboo to form a fence, Koko and his mother moved plants and flowers, and personally dug up moss to make a small garden.
Because of his interesting childhood of going to the house and the trees, Koko hopes that the experience of going to the house and uncovering the tiles can be expressed in another way, and deliberately uses a wooden and steel frame structure to build a road to the roof, which is on the right side of the courtyard, which is difficult to ignore. A new eaves have been built on the left side, adding more seating and a view of the house, the courtyard and the roof.
Reaching the Roof Photo: Zou Zou.
When the old yard was renovated, Koko was still teaching piano outside, often covering tiles with moonlight after finishing work, and sometimes in the middle of the night suddenly came inspiration, "The yard needs to be changed like this!" And he got up and repaired it without hesitation.
Thanks to my father, who was already in the door and window business, some of the wooden planks used during the renovation were also hoarded in previous years. Dad has a lot of experience in decoration, and he also enjoys it, sometimes when he goes to dismantle things, he will stumble upon some materials, Koko finds it interesting and useful, so he picks it up and takes it home for recycling. Koko pointed out to us two stocky and quaint black stools in the room, which they said were picked up from a friend's piano room, and sprayed with black lacquer to match the courtyard of misunderstanding.
The old and the new meet here Photo: Zou Zou.
Dog walking, travel can be stooping, and you can also be in the village. The stories and aesthetics accumulated by objects and people are always some hidden and niche fun.
When I was a child, I misunderstood that the Taile Village where the courtyard was located used a kind of tile (commonly known as Hewa) called "small green tile" by the locals, which is different from the common cement tile now, the small green tile is hand-molded, blue-gray, and after a long time, a thin layer of moss will grow on the roof, which is difficult to buy now, so Koko began to insist on "looting" the idle of his relatives, and now both yards are covered with his favorite small green tile.
Little Green Tile" **Courtesy of Koko.
There's a lot of old stuff here, but there's always been a lot of new ideas. Instead of insisting on opening a store every day in the peak season, he instead "announced" to the circle of friends, saying that he wanted the store to close, and he misunderstood that the courtyard was about to "change clothes" again.
When he was a child, Koko loved to "swing around", and every week or two he had a whim, moving furniture, electrical appliances, changing the layout, and refreshing. This kind of game, which has continued from childhood to the present, has brought a more vivid growth trend to the misunderstanding garden, and customers often come back to visit the "old friends".
From time to time, customers come back to visit the new news of "old friends" Photo: Zou Zou.
After chatting with Koko for an hour, Koko interrupted our conversation several times with apologies, and was sent to the gate of the hospital in parallel with the guests, he could not have said "come back next time", and judging by his expression, he should have said something like "stay safe, have a good trip".
Being able to be friends with the space is largely not only because the space is comfortable enough, but also because of the role of people.
The yard is not big, but every time you come, there will be new discoveries Photo: Zou Zou; The image below left is courtesy of Koko.
A big counterattack in a small place.
The display in the misunderstanding garden changes from time to time, and the menu of afternoon tea also has a lot of tricks to play. Persimmon-themed afternoon tea; boil white tea with pear or tangerine peel; Tea is made around the stove long before the fire starts; Develop a pair of snacks ......
The Misunderstanding Courtyard has gone from a simple courtyard where you can drink afternoon tea, to providing dinner, to recently being busy opening up a small courtyard next to it where you can stay. If you don't want to leave after afternoon tea, let's have dinner together! If you want to get together after dinner, let's look forward to tomorrow morning's yard!
Sitting in a courtyard Photo: Zou Zou.
In another 10 years, few young people are willing to return from the city to a small place, not only because of the belief that they have "to go out" since they were young, but also because the young people who have upgraded their lifestyles have long been derailed from their hometowns, which are only "overgrown with weeds".
But nowadays, cities don't seem to be as rosy as they imagined, with competition for social resources, increased work pressure, and high cost of living ......For various reasons, these young people from small cities or villages have begun to yearn for the once carefree rural life again, which is also one of the reasons why the phenomenon of self-built house renovation, young people returning to their hometowns to start businesses, and fire life is everywhere.
The blessing characters and lanterns hung by Koko on the New Year Photo: Zou Zou.
To a certain extent, expressions of local lifestyles such as misunderstanding courtyards and county cafes are reshaping the countryside, and the barrenness and silence of the past are gradually replaced by hustle and bustle, and nothing can activate the vitality of the countryside more than the return of young people.
In the future, let's wait and see what changes these young people and the new business formats they operate can bring to the countryside.
Postscript |One
Peers of the same age as Koko generally complained of confusion, and Koko once wrote: "Now the time is in the countryside, in this yard, there is nothing at the age of 30, but fortunately there is this yard." ”
In addition to staying in the yard, Koko will also shoot in the surrounding area, hoping to record and share his hometown as much as possible. Days in the countryside aren't always new, but there's something different. Two days ago, he shared with us that he heard his parents chopping vegetables in the yard the first night, and the next morning he saw the neighbor's house and his own field full of vegetables.
Work & Country **Courtesy of Koko.
The little diary that Xiaoxue wrote on that day last year: "Go out to do nucleic acid." Today's nucleic acid collection point is a few steps away from my house. Before going out, I saw the smoke of my neighbor's big smoke bar, which I guessed was smoking bacon. Less than ten o'clock, there was basically no queue, and the villagers were really active. When I went home after cooking, I walked the path with my mother, plucked a few radishes by the way, cooked pork rib soup, and there were workers who ate it together at noon. Relatives are peeling green bamboo shoots, neighbors' local chickens, and I heard that XX in the village is about to pass away......Early in the morning, all kinds of things in the world are staged. He added: The winter morning sun is not spicy, warm, and very comfortable on the body.
Have you ever imagined trying to depict a happy day in the future? Maybe I'll also adopt Koko's perspective and write about ordinary and unique shining days. Perhaps when Koko chose to return to his hometown to live a good life, he chose a different way of looking at his surroundings.
Postscript |II
After coming back and flipping through a few books about the countryside, let's look at the matter of "college students returning to the village" from another perspective. This is not new.
A hundred years ago, in the Chinese countryside, there were still many squires, and the intellectual Liang Shuming wrote the "Theory of Rural Construction", feeling that the countryside had suffered unprecedented impact and destruction; Fei Xiaotong wrote "Rural China", reiterating the importance of the countryside to Chinese society. At that time, returning to the hometown was a salvation and survival in the cultural crisis, or it was to pin China's hopes on the transformation and reconstruction of the countryside.
In the sixties and seventies, the movement of going to the mountains and going to the countryside allowed the intellectual youth in the cities to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and middle peasants. This "lost generation" has high hopes and the goal is to train the first people to be revolutionary. At that time, the return to the countryside was a desperate effort in the midst of a political crisis, or a rural redistribution of the urban population.
The economic development and urbanization after the reform and opening up have made a huge number of rural people pour into the city, and today, 40 years later, what is the rural revitalization mentioned again? Is it a breakthrough under the economic crisis, or a reshaping under cultural self-confidence? If we borrow the theory of modern social space reproduction, then it can also be regarded as a contemporary way of social space reproduction.
In any case, the return of intellectuals to their hometowns today is a completely new situation and a topic.
Similar to the problem of "urban gentrification" in urban renewal, today's rural construction case, with the blessing of the unusually developed Internet infrastructure and convenient transportation, seems to be a critique of the theory of "unbalanced development". Under the reproduction of social space, will there be "rural gentrification"?
The digital economy and creative design are driving today's capital and "intellectual books" back to the countryside, and are shaping the lifestyle scenes that are unimaginable for urban people. This may be a reversal of the "socio-spatial reorganization" that has followed China's urbanization over the past four decades.
When the convenience, agglomeration and advantages of the city are dissolved or even broken in many subdivisions, when the comfort and differentiation of the countryside are strengthened, and when more people realize that the foundation of traditional Chinese culture lies in the countryside, our rural construction today may be the new real "rural surrounding the city", and finally achieve the rebalance between the city and the countryside.