Xiaogang Village 小岗村

About Xiaogang Village

Xiaogang Village (小岗村) is a village in Xiaoxihe town (小溪河镇), Fengyang County (凤阳县), Chuzhou (滁州), Anhui, where eighteen farmers secretly divided collective land into household plots in 1978, a step that opened China's rural reforms.

Xiaogang Village lies in the east of Fengyang County on the southern side of the middle Huai River (淮河), and its land covers 15 square kilometres. During the Great Leap Forward famine, 67 villagers died of hunger between 1958 and 1960. In 1978 Fengyang was hit by a severe drought. On the night of 24 November that year, eighteen households signed a contract, sealed with red fingerprints, to farm the land family by family: after paying the state its tax and the collective its share, each family kept the rest. They also pledged to raise the children of any signatory caught and sentenced to death.

The 1979 harvest brought in 66,000 kilograms of grain, as much as the five years from 1966 to 1970 put together. The new leadership under Deng Xiaoping (邓小平) held the village up as a model, and collective farming was dropped across China by 1983. Xiaogang became known as the first village of China's rural reform (中国农村改革第一村). In 2004 Shen Hao (沈浩), an official from the Anhui Provincial Department of Finance, came to serve as first secretary (第一书记) of the village Party branch and led villagers in a plan to develop industry, modern farming and tourism.

The Former Site of Xiaogang Village (小岗村旧址) became a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level in October 2019. The village is also a national AAAA tourist attraction and a national classic red-tourism scenic area, and on 15 November 2024 the UN Tourism Executive Council put it on its 2024 list of Best Tourism Villages. Visitors come for the museum of the 1978 contract, the recreated farm courtyard where the pact is remembered, a hall on Shen Hao's work, and a street of workshops and farm restaurants along Youyi Avenue (友谊大道).

What to look for

• Da Baogan Memorial Hall (大包干纪念馆), the museum of the 1978 household contract
• Dangnian Nongjia (当年农家, 'the farmhouse of those years'), a courtyard that recreates the scene of the 1978 pact
• The small room where the villagers pressed their red fingerprints in 1978
• Shen Hao Exhibition Hall (沈浩先进事迹陈列馆), on the official who served as the village Party branch's first secretary from 2004
• The workshop street on Youyi Avenue, with farm restaurants, a flower-drum (花鼓) workshop, an old liquor workshop and a tofu workshop

Location & getting there

Getting to Xiaogang Village

• Search for 小岗村 with 滁州市 and 凤阳县.