When calling on all people in rural China to learn from Dazhai 41 years ago, late Chairman Mao Zedong might never anticipate that the model village he favored would no long live on farming nowadays.

Not only Mao, villagers of Dazhai, a small rural community of 500 residents in north China's Shanxi Province, also did not foresee the changes that have taken place in their village over the past few decades, which resulted in fast growth of the local economy and great improvement in the villagers' living standards.

Zhao Suwen, a 67-year-old villager, said, "I never expected the high-yield terraced farmland my fellow villagers and I reclaimed from barren hillsides would turn into forest." Several years ago, Zhao also planted trees in the reclaimed land.

Instead of depending solely on farming, Zhao and his fellow villagers have turned to diversified business operations along a new but more environment-friendly way of development for a mountainous village.

Currently, most of the arable land the villagers reclaimed on the hillsides in the 1960s has been turned into orchards and dense woods, and the 235-hectare barren hills have been covered with trees.

In today's Dazhai, not a single household is solely engaged in farming, and more than 80 percent of villagers work in village-run industrial enterprises or operate small businesses of their own.

Last year, the village posted an output value of more than 100 million yuan (US$12.3 million) and a per capita income of 5,000 yuan (US$617). The income from agriculture production only accounted for 1 percent.

"Dazhai sets an example for rural communities in China to follow in seeking economic development while maintaining sound ecological environment," said Huang Daoxia, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council.

Dazhai rose to national fame in the 1960s and 1970s when local villagers turned rocky hills into terraced grain fields through team work and self-reliance.

"Whether it was windy or rained, we villagers worked from dawn to dusk everyday," Zhao said, recalling the early days when he and his fellow villagers worked on barren hillsides. "I came down with arthritis and my wife's legs deformed."

The strenuous work of Zhao and his fellow villagers paid off as Dazhai's grain output reached 9,000 kilograms per hectare, a record for the drought-prone village at that time.

Dazhai's feat prompted Chairman Mao to urge the whole nation to learn from the village in 1964 and Dazhai was thus held up as China's paradigm of defying all hardships and difficulties to "conquer nature."

In the following decade, Dazhai received about 10 million visitors from home and abroad, including foreign government leaders. Some came to learn experience and some others just for a visit. Dazhai also became the only village in China whose name could be traced and found on a national map at that time.

Though no longer acclaimed as an agricultural pacesetter, Dazhai now distinguishes itself from China's 680,000 villages in achieving a win-win situation for both economic development and ecological improvement.

As host of the ongoing national forum for village heads, Dazhai presented to more than 500 village heads from across China a harmonious rural community with diversified industries and ecology-friendly tourism. And because of this, Dazhai was named at the forum one of the top ten villages in China.

Dazhai's boom experienced twists and turns. Since it adopted the reform and opening-up policy in the late 1970s, China gave up the rural development guidelines centering on farming, and began readjusting the economic structure and encouraging localities to take development modes suitable to their own conditions.

Dazhai villagers, who teamed up together and created a miracle in farming in the 1960s-70s, could not believe that collective farming would be gone for forever. Shocked at the fact that villages that sent representatives to Dazhai to learn experience have got rich very soon from diversified business operations, Dazhai villagers came to realize: it was time for a change.

In the 1980s, the 500 people in the village subsisted on 47 hectares of arable land to earn an annual income of 2.7 million yuan (US$333,000), or 735 yuan (US$90) per capita.

"In the past, we used to be content with other villages learning from us, but reality told us that we should also learn from others," recalled Guo Fenglian, the 58-year-old woman leader of the village.

In the early 1990s, representatives were chosen from each of the 140 households in the village to go to economically-developed villages in the eastern and southern China to draw their experiences.

"We were shocked at Dazhai's lagging far behind those developed villages," said Guo, who was nationally known leader of the "iron girls" when Dazhai reclaimed farmland from rocky hillsides.

"It is clear that the natural conditions of Dazhai makes quality farming a daydream. There will be no way out unless Dazhai readjusts its economic structure," Guo said.

Dazhai villagers then established more than a dozen kinds of businesses ranging from chemicals, building materials, drinks and garments to modern farming and deep processing with most products labeled "Dazhai."

"Although Dazhai has caught up with the rich villages in east China in terms overall economic strength, it is still beset with such problems as small industrial scale, low technological level and poor marketing skills," said Huang Daoxia, the researcher.

The nameplate carrying the big red characters "Dazhai" still stands at the village entrance and songs of the 1960s-70s are still heard. They add to the appeal of the village, now a tourist destination which attracts more than 200,000 visitors a year.

To serve the increasing number of visitors, many villagers including Zhao Suwen begin selling souvenirs in their own courtyards.

The young generation, of course, also benefit a lot from the fast development of Dazhai.

Zhao's 36-year-old son, Zhao Jianwei, worked as a designer at a garment firm in the village before starting his own business several years ago. Junior Zhao now runs a tailor's shop, a cave home-turned inn and a shop, making a profit of more than 30,000 yuan (US$3,700) annually.

Living in a two-story villa, one of the 54 built by the village, Zhao and his peers can hardly imagine how their parents had conquered harsh natural conditions with hoes and picks. But they said they did admire the spirit of the hardworking of their parents. "We still need such spirit today," said the young Zhao.

Zhao is one of the young villagers in Dazhai who still engage in farming. But it is easier nowadays as the village authorities are responsible for purchasing crop seeds and sloughing which is done by agricultural machines.

(Xinhua News Agency September 6, 2005)