Yuanjia Village 袁家村

About Yuanjia Village

The village's own brand for the place is 关中印象体验地, rendered as the Guanzhong impression experience site. The National Development and Reform Commission's case study records that the village turned to rural tourism in 2007, taking the region's traditional ways of production and living as its resource and its theme, and that it later attracted more than 800 makers and took on over 3,000 jobs. The case study's figures for the period are over five million visitors a year, calculable income above 500 million yuan and per-capita net income above 100,000 yuan, and it cites the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' 2016 China Rural Tourism Development Index report, which ranked Yuanjiacun first among China's rural-tourism villages. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism describes the destination as one whose content is the Guanzhong folk culture carried by traditional old buildings, old workshops, old objects and other such tangible and intangible heritage, and whose character is that local farmers run the businesses and village life is integrated with them.

The built result is a set of streets. The first, Kangzhuang old street, gathered traditional Shaanxi crafts for display, among them cloth weaving, flour milling, oil pressing and vinegar brewing; a snack street was added to it in 2009, gathering nearly 100 kinds of Shaanxi and especially Guanzhong food. From 2010, the case study records, the village addressed the problem that visitors came in numbers by day but did not stay at night by building a guesthouse area for overnight stays and then a bar street along with the art street and fashion street, several large themed streets, to go with rural leisure holidays. To raise villagers' quality it opened a farmers' school and the Yuanjiacun night school, through which it worked on villagers' thinking, education and service issues. The commission's figures and its account of the streets describe the village as it stood when the case study was published in April 2020.

What to look for

• Kangzhuang old street, the first street built in the scenic area, where traditional Shaanxi crafts the case study names — cloth weaving, flour milling, oil pressing and vinegar brewing — were gathered for display
• The snack street added to the old street in 2009, gathering nearly 100 kinds of Shaanxi and Guanzhong food
• The guesthouse area built from 2010 for overnight stays, and the bar street, art street and fashion street that followed it
• The farmers' school and the Yuanjiacun night school the village opened to raise villagers' quality
• The village's setting in the north of Liquan County below the Jiuzong Mountains, where the Tang imperial mausoleum Zhaoling stands

Location & getting there

Getting to Yuanjia Village

Identify the main visitor approach and any separately managed houses, museums or performances. Ask before entering residential spaces or photographing residents.

• Search for 袁家村 with 咸阳市 and 礼泉县.