Dear Clio,
This is just a mail to say thank you for your help. We were very pleased with your service as well as our fantastic guide, Grace, in Xian.
We had a great time, saw a lot of things and enjoyed the friendliness of all people we met.
We will certainly recommend other friends to contact you for assistance.
Thanks again!
Louise
As you know, about 62% of Beijing's landmass is mountainous area where millions of villages are scattered with the history of hundreds of years. In Beijing, the permanent residents include 8.495 million urban residents and 3.1 million rural residents according to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. The registered number of transit population has reached 3.649 million. So the total number of people living in Beijing has reached 15.244 million. To know Beijing better and have a clearer picture of Beijing, it is a must to visit a village around Beijing to see how they live and what they do.
China has set out the plan called "building a new socialist countryside" to redress the gap dividing the country into two parts: the affluent urban and the less developed rural area. China's top leadership has the ambitious plan to build a "new socialist countryside" trying to assist peasants, who work very hard all the year round, but earn little. The plan is believed to feature a great shift in infrastructure and investment priorities from urban to rural areas. Although China is traditionally an agricultural country with over half of the population still farming, industrialization and urbanization have outweighed other fields on the government agenda in the past decades. Rural China has fallen behind the pace with the development of urban areas. The new countryside plan shows that the government is to pay equal attention to the countryside as to the cities, and is to revitalize rural China through science and technology. The official criteria for the new countryside are "enhanced productive forces, higher living standards, civilized living style, an orderly and clean environment, and democratic administration". The new countryside plan has achieved positive results as below:
1) Better interaction between urban and rural areas and on the construction of harmony in rural communities.
2) Great efforts have been made to perfect social security systems in the countryside.
3) The plan aims to construct the rural areas into desirable communities for comfortable living attractive both to conventional rural dwellers but also urbanites.
4) Now a large part of the rural areas in Beijing has sustained the momentum of development and remain affluent.
Juyongguan Great Wall is one of the three most famous passes of Great Wall in China. The other two passes are Shanhai Pass and Jiayuguan Pass. After hiking 2-3 hours, we will drive to Zhuishikou village, 1km west of Tailing ( one of the 13 Ming Tombs ).
Chuandixia village is well known for its well preserved over 600 Ming and Qing dynasty-style houses housed by 70 families. These houses are contructed on the side of a hill, surrounded by mountains and forests. The village is listed as a village under national level cultural relics protection.
Hancunhe village is a medium-sized village with a population of over 2,700. Hancunhe village is located in Fangshan District, the southwest of Beijing and about 50km away from downtown Beijing. Once a poor village, Hancunhe has now become one of the nation's model villages.
Gaobeidian village is a thousand-year-old village, the nearest historical village of Beijing and located on the extended east-line of ChangAn Avenue, only 20 minutes ride from downtown. Attractions: Tonghui River, Gaobeidian Classic Furniture Street, Gaobeidian Chinese Folk Custom Park with Hu-tong layout and a local farmer’s house.
