Who will guard your "nostalgia"? Zheng Yuchang: Vigorously cultivate "designers who understand the countryside"

Nandu News In the process of urbanization, why are the villages that we hope to revitalize be placed? After the integration of urban and rural development, will there still be a border between the city and the countryside?

Zheng Yuchang, deputy secretary-general of the Urban and Urban-Rural Coordinated Development Professional Committee of the China Urbanization Promotion Association, who calls himself a "peasant designer" and secretary general of the Urban and Rural Characteristics Special Committee of the World Association of Chinese Architects (WACA), has been "wandering" in urban construction and rural construction for many years, he told Nandu reporters, "The city will feed the countryside, the countryside will also feed the city, and people can effectively flow in two carriers to truly achieve urban-rural integration." ”

"Construction" is Zheng Yuchang's discourse system that adheres to the construction of beautiful villages, pays attention to returning to the authenticity of the countryside, and starts from the actual living needs of the masses. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has issued a document stressing the need to prevent rural landscaping, urbanization, and Westernization. In his view, this is due to the fact that most of the designers trained by urban universities serve urbanization, and there is a lack of designers who really understand the countryside. Rural revitalization and development is surging, how to express and protect your and my "nostalgia" through rural construction? During the 2021 Reading China International Conference (Guangzhou), Zheng Yuchang was interviewed by Nandu reporters on related topics.

Zheng Yuchang was interviewed by a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily on topics related to rural revitalization and rural construction.

Profile: Zheng Yuchang

Deputy Secretary-General of the Professional Committee of Urban and Rural Integrated Development of China Urbanization Promotion Association, Secretary-General of the Urban and Rural Characteristics Committee of the World Association of Chinese Architects (WACA), and Think Tank Expert of Tsinghua University Beautiful Countryside Public Welfare Fund.

His research interests include stock asset activation, incremental asset activation, urban renewal, and rural construction.

The integration of urban and rural development is mutual feedback, but there are boundaries

Nandu: How do you understand "urban-rural integration"?

Zheng Yuchang: China's cities and villages are two systems, with the logic and system of developing cities to develop the countryside, it is difficult to integrate, it will only develop into small cities, small towns, resulting in a thousand villages, so we must first clarify the difference between the city and the countryside.

Cities show "fast", need to build industrial functional zones, to achieve "agglomeration and integration intensive" development, while traditional villages show "slow", mainly small-scale peasant economy, there is no "industry" said. The countryside must be civilianized, have a temperature, and retain its authenticity in order to satisfy the nostalgia in the hearts of urban people and make them willing to return. Villagers will also yearn for the city, connecting the elements of urbanization to the vast number of farmers through the village collective platform, so that they can flow to the city. The city (technology, science and technology, wisdom) will feed back to the countryside, and the countryside (authenticity, ecology, culture) will also feed back to the city, so as to truly achieve the integration of urban and rural areas.

Nandu: Are there still boundaries after the integration of urban and rural development? How to distinguish between city and countryside?

Zheng Yuchang: Yes. Cities should implant rural development technologies, not development means. For example, in the process of building beautiful villages, many designers will use urban garden techniques to make landscapes in the countryside, such as neat and uniform street trees and garden nurseries. In fact, there is no "green belt" in the countryside, and villagers prefer to plant cash crops such as fruit trees to meet their lives. The use of gardening in the countryside is not a rural ecology.

Nandu: With the development of urbanization, the future of rural areas is bound to be less and less?

Zheng Yuchang: There are many types of rural areas in China, some of which are villages on the edge of urban areas, which will slowly merge with the city, retain the "taste of the countryside" during construction, and implant a modern lifestyle; part of them are central villages, and the surrounding villagers will slowly gather to the central villages. There are also some remote villages, which are divided into three categories: one is that the basic conditions are difficult and lack characteristics, and will slowly disappear; one is of historical and cultural value, which will be retained and passed down; and the other is a type of industry with characteristics, through the development of "smart agriculture", it can be linked with urban needs and will also develop. Of course, considering the differences between different regions in China, through the top-level design, different types of villages will play different functions, thereby improving land utilization.

Nandu: Building beautiful villages is actually activating the countryside.

Zheng Yuchang: In an era when the urbanization rate is very high, the vast rural space has become a reservoir of development. We build beautiful villages, there are many stock assets in the village that need to be activated, such as idle houses, factories, post offices, communes, old schools, etc., incremental asset activation is also very important, giving cultural connotations. Let these assets fully realize their value in villages, towns and counties, and promote rural revitalization.

The construction of beautiful countryside focuses on "traditional Chinese medicine conditioning"

Nandu: You have served as the chief designer of many rural construction projects, among which the Beautiful Rural Construction Project of Xiaodi Village in Handan District, Handan City won the first place in CCTV's "Top Ten Most Beautiful Villages in China" in 2016. What is the experience?

Zheng Yuchang: In the early days of Xiaodi Village, a round of standardized design was done by the local design institute, but it was not satisfactory. I believe that rural construction should use the language of "construction" instead of the language of planning and design, and we must zero out our inherent cognition, re-examine the local way of life, dig deep into the local folk culture, and return to the original.

After entering the village, we started from the perspective of co-construction, and the party members and cadres in the village led the villagers to carry out transformation, combined with the living habits of the people, and created a model in a demonstration-driven way. One is the construction of infrastructure, village style and other hardware, with local materials and craftsman techniques to repair, rather than granite, marble and other modern materials piled up; the second is the people's ideological unity, the planning of the soul is greater than the planning of the drawings, by calling on the villagers to build together, activate their "master" consciousness, which is the "software" promotion, but also for the revitalization of the countryside to add endogenous power; the third is the construction of rural formats, through female red, peasant women training, e-commerce training, so that the majority of the people participate in it, in addition to some indigenous people continue to engage in a production, Those professional farmers can combine the tertiary production with the homestead to build homestays, village accommodations, and rural accommodations, and add special processing workshops to the secondary production, so that the development of the village is constantly changing.

The beautiful countryside is not only superficial beauty, but also inner beauty. Through 9 months, we use companionship and cultivation, just like Traditional Chinese medicine, to slowly adjust, so that the village from the outside to the inside, from the environment to the humanities to produce an overall change.

Nandu: Where does such funding for rural transformation come from?

Zheng Yuchang: Part of it is the government's financial funding for seed funds, and the other part is to promote the villagers to build together, and the villagers to participate, first to attract investment and wisdom, and then to attract investment and activate the village collective funds.

Nandu: A village takes 9 months to transform, tens of thousands of rural areas across the country, and the rural revitalization action has time to plan, why do you have so much financial resources and time to achieve "slow work and small work"?

Zheng Yuchang: This is a very important issue. In the rural revitalization, the policies of various ministries and commissions can be summarized, and the core is the county, "the financial resources are limited, and the people's strength is unlimited." We build this demonstration village, is to hope that through the government to leverage funds, drive villagers, villagers, villagers, enterprises to participate together, to make a model, equivalent to the sales center in the city, so that all parties can see the hope, through replication and promotion, not only the construction concept and method, but also the mode of capital operation, from point to surface to drive the development of the entire region, large planning and small cut-in, while correcting the demonstration, so that the spark can burn the original.

We also hope to train and cultivate local rural planners, craftsmen and brands, guide them to understand what is rural culture, find out the connotation of rural truth, goodness and beauty, so that they can become the backbone of rural construction, so as to drive more villagers around them to participate in village construction, supervise village transformation, and achieve co-construction, co-governance and sharing.

We must vigorously cultivate "designers who understand the countryside"

Nandu: Recently, a variety show transformed a family house in rural Gansu, which caused heated discussion among netizens because of the high cost of millions of yuan and the presentation effect of "red brick rough houses". Among them, it is controversial that the architectural style is far from the surrounding environment. What do you think about that?

Zheng Yuchang: I am a peasant designer. In my opinion, many designers at present tend to pursue personal artistic feelings, and pursue cool, modern, fashionable, and trendy effects in design, which is not wrong. But a designer who really understands the countryside must first know the living habits and economic strength of the people, and build and renovate houses according to their demands.

Simple residential renovation, more from the perspective of self-occupation to improve the internal life function; if you want to use part of the operation on the basis of self-occupation, you must think systematically from the construction funds, building appearance, and regional style; if the house is handed over to the village collective or enterprise to operate, it is necessary to think from the business attributes. In short, basing ourselves on reality and returning to the true nature is not only respect for the lives of ordinary people, but also respect for the countryside.

Nandu: Are there many designers who understand rural construction? Many people seem to think that many cities are designed by designers sitting in offices, is there a fault line for rural designers?

Zheng Yuchang: (Laughs) This question is very sharp. This is a return to education. At present, the designers of gardens, landscapes, architecture, planning and so on trained from urban colleges and universities are almost all in the service of urbanization, and have a set of logic. In fact, in ancient times, including the popular period of Song's construction skills, there were no registered architects and registered planners, and more were returned to the township to build. At the moment of promoting rural revitalization, there is a great lack of designers who really understand the countryside. If all the planners and designers who are highly urbanized enter the countryside, using urban methods to build the countryside is equivalent to a kind of devastating destruction.

Nandu: How to make up for this short board?

Zheng Yuchang: I think that, first, from the basic education end, we must establish rural revitalization schools, and we must restructure the overall system from teachers and teaching materials. Because in the process of rural revitalization, there are very few talents who really cultivate the countryside, and a large number of talents are basically urbanization talents from high school to above; second, through government guidance, village collective leadership, farmer participation, township sages and enterprise cooperation, jointly create a demonstration model of systematic rural construction (hardware and software, operation, finance, etc.), and influence and cultivate a group of talents who really understand rural construction.

"The villagers are the masters, we are just collaborators"

Nandu: Should the construction of beautiful villages also be planned well in the development functional areas of rural areas in order to be better revitalized?

Zheng Yuchang: This is the urbanization layout thinking. You find that no, rural development is dynamic, gradually "growing" from one place. It is still necessary to combine the life habits of the people for thousands of years, what they want, how to buy a house, how to inherit, not "what I want to help you do".

Nandu: In your experience, what determines villager engagement? Government, capital?

Zheng Yuchang: People's spiritual strength is the core of rural revitalization. If the people want to benefit, to benefit, and to see the hope of development, this is the core of truly promoting their common participation, which needs to be constantly revised. First of all, let the villagers return to the role of "master" and let them exert subjective initiative. Governments, enterprises, and experts are all collaborators in the countryside, not masters and leaders.

Nandu: Can the villagers think so well?

Zheng Yuchang: This requires us to cooperate with the village collective to think and plan. We have a Haotang Village project, which is based on the "dream" feedback from the village party secretary. At first, the village felt that there was no place for the elderly, so we built a pension center, and later the village said that there were no section-level cadres, so we built a primary school. And so on, combined with local demands to develop, what is done is meaningful.

It is recommended to set up a "village investment company" to deeply dock with the market

Nandu: What are your expectations?

Zheng Yuchang: At present, there is still a fragmented operation mode of rural revitalization, and it should be systematized, from land and environment to life and people's customs. I hope that it is not the enterprises that have transferred a lot of land to the village, and the villagers who work for the enterprises, but the urban people who work for the villages, the village collectives are "state-owned enterprises", and the house of each citizen is a "company".

For example, in the hot homestays now, it is more that enterprises rent villagers' houses in operation. In addition to the homestay can also have a village accommodation, the villagers themselves run, when people come out of one or two rooms to entertain, when there is no one to live in their own very comfortable. In the future, there will also be township accommodation, through enterprise operation, village collective management, and villagers' participation in the shares, so that the village residence will produce multiple compound values and strengthen the village collective. In the future, there will be more attempts in the countryside, generating different concepts and development forces.

These things we are doing are called the New Villagers Project. Keep the indigenous people, maintain the simple folk style, and the new villagers will feel the temperature after entering the village.

Nandu: If the "new villagers" want to stay, the homestay is not the way.

Zheng Yuchang: Now many urban retirees yearn to retire in the countryside, but there is no house in the countryside. We propose the "separation of three rights" of ownership, management and use of homesteads, if we can realize "one house and two doors" through the way of farmhouse purchase or rural "green card", one door is the indigenous people, the other door is the new villagers, the indigenous people and the new villagers take care of each other, integration, resulting in urban-rural linkage, which is also the future of the life that urban people yearn for. In the future, there will be a variety of models for rural homesteads to give full play to their value.

We also think about how to promote the establishment of "village investment companies" in village collectives, because many cooperatives have been established in the village, but they do not have the ability to connect with the market. By setting up a village investment company to connect various types of cooperatives such as villagers' housing cooperatives, tourism cooperatives, and financial cooperatives to the market and urban investment, the villages can be activated and the "new villager plan" can be realized.

Nandu: Have you done research in the countryside of Guangdong?

Zheng Yuchang: To be honest, it is relatively rare, and I have only been to a few villages so far. In my opinion, Guangdong's economy is very developed and the degree of urbanization is high, and Shenzhen and Zhuhai have stepped out of the development model of the special zone. Guangdong is also a pragmatic place, can it also make a "special zone model" for rural revitalization and match economic development? Guangdong's original townships and towns are more to adapt to the product of the era of industrialization, pay attention to economic development, lack of internal cultural linkage, now we must pay attention to starting from the living habits of local residents, starting from the ecological environment, from the cultural height to think, based on the construction of agricultural and industrial and commercial relations under the agricultural civilization, constantly revise the relationship between the city and the countryside, open up the connection between the past and the modern, Guangdong has great hope in this regard.

Written by: Nandu reporter Mo Zhihua

Photo: Nandu reporter Chen Yunjian