Yuanjia Village

This guide to Yuanjia Village near Xi'an opens with thirty-five leaders cycling through in six years, the poorest scrap of Guanzhong farmland once known as the beggar village. It follows a young farmer, Guo Yulu, handed the job nobody wanted in the winter of 1970, and how he built brickworks, construction and transport ventures that pushed the village's collective assets past a billion yuan, before national crackdowns on polluting industry gutted those factories decades later. Walk the alley today, past chili strings, corn cobs and a stone mill still turning.