|
HANGZHOU, Aug. 14-- Every day, thousands of tourists board a train in a small village in east China's Zhejiang Province for a sight-seeing trip that takes them to various household-run plantations. While offering visitors an exhilarating scenery, Lujiacun village invariably impresses them with its achievements in eco-protection. Garbage sorting is extensively practiced in the village, which also has an advanced sewage purification system. "If it were not for President Xi Jinping's vision of ecological protection, the environment of my hometown would have never undergone tremendous changes," said Qiu Liqin, a resident of Lujiacun, located in Anji County. Interestingly, the county was a shooting location of Oscar-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Qiu was referring to Xi's famous line, "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," which was envisioned 15 years ago in Anji and has become a guiding principle for green development in her village and China at large. During the 1980s and 90s, like many places in China, Anji went through a period of breakneck economic development pursued at all costs. In Yucun village, Anji's largest limestone mining area, villagers enriched themselves by processing limestone into cement, and the annual income of the village once exceeded 3 million yuan (about 428,000 U.S. dollars). "At that time, smoke from the cement factories overcast the entire village all year round, and all the bamboo leaves on the mountains had been blackened," recalled Hu Jiaxing, a villager from Yucun. "Living in such an environment for a long time, many villagers couldn't help feeling gloomy." | 
