Under a soft winter sun, a 64-year-old farmer is topdressing lettuce and cabbage in his organic vegetable garden, vegetables that will go to his urban customers.

"These urbanites rent my kale yard. I grow whatever greens they want, and tend the garden for them. I get my pockets full, and they get their stomachs stuffed with fresh vegetables all year round," Feng Daishu says with a big grin.

The Feng's family of three earned more than 20,000 yuan (about US$2,500) last year. "That's a big leap compared with our income of 4,000 yuan in the year before," he says, spreading some fertilizer on cauliflower.

Feng Daishu is one of 2,000 villagers in the Jiangjia Vegetable Garden in Sansengxiang Township, which is part of the Jinjiang District of Chengdu, capital of China's southwestern Sichuan Province. Farmers in Sanshengxiang, also known as Sansheng Huaxiang or "the Three Saints' Flowering Town", have being practicing this new type of farming since 2005.

With annual rent of US$15,000 per hectare, villagers lease their lands through the local agriculture cooperative. Fifteen percent of the rent goes to the cooperatives as the maintenance for basic facilities.

Chang Qing, a township government official, says, "An urban family that rents a plot can grow vegetables hand in hand with excellent farm workers or leave the work to landowners like Feng. They just come to collect the produce when it's ripe."

A part of the community-based rural tourism package The Five Golden Flowers, the Jiangjia Vegetable Garden has so far attracted more than 3,000 families from Chengdu.

Safeguard Rural Interests

Developed in 2003 by the Jinjiang District government, the Five Golden Flowers is designated to help out the people of Sanshengxiang, a place where the soil texture is yellow clay, and unsuitable for growing grain. A local saying goes, "the soil becomes hard like a knife when it's sunny, whereas it tunes muddy when it's raining."

The district's Communist party chief Bai Gang notes that the area is so impoverished that Sanshengxiang used be taken for purgatory, despite the fact that it is only 6.5 km east of Chengdu, which is reputed to be "Heaven's Kingdom on the Earth" for agriculture.

"No body wanted to go to Sanshengxiang, "says Bai. "In the old days, politically-incorrect officeholders in Chengdu would be sent to Sanshengxiang as punishment for their demerits. Politically-promising young officials were also dispatched down there to get some experience before being promoted to higher posts."

With an ambition to turn purgatory into a desirable place, the Jinjian District government worked out the Five Golden Flowers scheme in 2003. Reaching into the poorest rural areas of Chengdu, the program markets tourist resources in rural communities, based on the pattern of local people's traditional production.

"Yet," Bai Gang says, "the Five Golden Flowers is different from the existing Happy Rural Family tourism program originated in Chengdu in the 1990s, which spread across the whole country later.

The Happy Rural Family was unprompted, emerging by itself and, if unsuccessful, perishing by itself. The program is the product of individual farmers with business savvy. In the mid-1990s, they turned their houses into a weekend retreats for bored urbanites from Chengdu.

The Five Golden Flowers as a rural tourism industry is the result of the combined efforts of government and rural families, who are organized to offer urbanites a new alternative to the famed leisure pursuits of the city.

People of Sanshengxiang have a long history of growing flowers. "In keeping with that tradition, we have the five villages themed with one kind of flower: the Happy Plum Blossom Woods; the Chrysanthemum Garden Behind the East Bamboo Fence; The Moonlight over the Water Lily Pond; the Fragrant Farmhouse; and the Jiangjia Vegetable Garden," Bai says proudly.

Cash in on Lands

Bai Gang , who once held the post of an agricultural county head for three years, has a rich experience in agriculture. He points out that no matter how it chooses to boost the rural tourism, the government must also make sure that farmers won't loose their rights, their lands, their interests, or their employment.

The Jinjian District government helped local farmers set up their own cooperatives. They also re-drew property maps so that farmers with scattered plots of land had all their property in one place, increasing their efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Take the Happy Plum Blossom Woods covering 66.7 hectares, with 40 varieties of plum flowers. After remaking out of the land, farmers can lease the land to flowering companies if they don't want to grow flowers themselves. The land lease can generate a household 30,000 yuan a year at least.

In this way, farmers are still working in their own land, living in their own houses, except the lands are now far more profitable and the houses far more comfortable.

Liu Yingcheng, a flower grower in the Fragrant Farmhouse, leased his family's land to a big company, and then used the rent money to set up a teahouse in his courtyard surrounded by the sweet-scented osmanthus trees.

The teahouse also serves rural, family-style food prepared from ecologically pure products to cater to urban tourists. Liu earned 30,000 yuan last year for his family of four. This is ten times more than he made by growing flowers in the past.

"Even in my dreams I didn't think that I could have such a wonderful life. You can make a handsome amount without working in the field under the sunshine or in the rain," the 50-year-old Liu says.

Liu's village has a population of more than 2,000. The income from running lodges and restaurants with the money earned by leasing land reached 7,000 yuan per person last year.

The rural tourism industry benefits three parties: local farmers; urban tourists; and the government, notes Luo Ming, sociologist from the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences.

To farmers, it's a not just vehicle to reduce poverty. Rather, he says, "participation of local inhabitants in tourism raises the interest and motivation in preservation of customs and in environmental protection."

"No one, but the people living on the land can improve that land. This kind of motivation is extremely important nowadays as Nature is suffering from the impact of human civilization."

A New Haven to Banish Urban Blues

For urbanites, a developed yet well-preserved rural community is the perfect haven to escape stressful daily routines.

"Urbanites today eager for the rural life. Rural tourism meets that desire, by offering them access to the essence of rural life, combined with an opportunity to learn from local traditions and about local people's way of life," Luo says.

Wang Yu, a civil servant takes the Five Golden Flowers as her favorite retreat, where "you can always get your different emotions appeased in one of the five communities, and in different seasons."

"Personally," she says, "I'm almost obsessed with the Plum Blossom Woods. You know, the winter in Chengdu is gloomy and cold, making me feel blue easily. When I drink tea there, with or without my friends, the fragrance of plum blossoms chases away the blues."

As for the government, it is important that rural tourism contributes to improving living conditions for the vegetable and flower growers. Last year, this rural region of Sanshengxiang received 7.5 million of tourists from around the country, turning out a revenue of 190 million yuan.

Thanks to the notable achievements, early this year, Sanshengxiang or Sansheng Huaxiang -- the Three Saints' Flowering Town, was granted the title of the National AAAA Top Grade Tourism Region by the National Tourism Administration, and cited as a demonstrating region for the country's cultural industry by the Ministry of Culture.

Figures from the Chengdu tourism bureau reveal that 5,596 households on the skirts of the city are engaged in rural tourism. By the end of 2005, direct earnings hit 730 million yuan, with relevant industries raking in 1.63 billion yuan.

(Xinhua News Agency December 26, 2006)