This case is about how Jianta Village has achieved poverty alleviation by developing its cultural tourism projects. The village is part of Ganxi Town of Pujiang County of Chengdu City in Sichuan Province. In 2016, it was identified as one of relative poverty in Chengdu’s third round of targeted poverty alleviation.

The development of Jianta’s cultural tourism projects is based on rebuilding villagers’ confidence in their own rich cultural heritage. In Tang Dynasty, the village was an important military town and was named by Lu Yu (i.e., China’s Sage of Tea) as one of tea production sites then. In Song Dynasty, Jianta was the location of the imperial mint. In Yuan Dynasty, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo visited Jianta several times when traveling along the Silk Road. In Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty, the village was an official courier station by the name of “Nansiluyangguan”. Based on Jianta’s significance in history, three projects have been designed and completed to boost villagers’ confidence in their own culture: 1) compiling a chronicle of Jianta Village; 2) building a museum of Jianta’s history; and 3) connecting places in Jianta to historical events and cultural signifiers on the village’s WeChat public account “Xiangyue Jianta”.

It is worth noting that a village hall was created, bearing the name of tea. It has become a place where many young villagers are enthusiastic about discussing issues related to their personal development as well as the development of their village. This enthusiasm, in turn, has fostered a more entrepreneurial culture among other villagers as well as leaders of Jianta. This is evidenced by the rapid increase in the number of entrepreneur projects designed by villagers from 0 to 24. Cultural tourism projects such as “Nianzhuji”, “Xinaoyuanxiao”, and “Fengshouqiushe”, in particular, have attracted more than 20,000 tourists to Jianta which was traditionally a place unknown for tourism. These projects, as can be expected, have lifted Jianta out of poverty in a relatively short period of time.

An important lesson from this case is that poverty alleviation can be approached in a different way (i.e., developing villagers into self-governing subjects who are confident in their own cultural heritage). This alternative approach can yield two particular benefits. Villagers tend to become not just beneficiaries, but more importantly, owners of the process of poverty alleviation, thus procuring stronger sense of happiness, belonging, and community. Besides, cultural heritage, as the ethos of a village, tends to be the driving force behind the process of enriching villagers’ lives not merely in terms of their material life, but more importantly, their inner life. After all, villagers are at the core of village revitalization.