Shandong province recently launched a plan to promote its beautiful village project, which aims to build four major regions with unique local features in Jiaodong and central, southwest and northwest Shandong, construct 10 scenic belts and foster 300 provincial-level pilot beautiful villages by 2020.

The three-year campaign is designed to advance rural development with local traits, improve the rural living environment and implement a rural vitalization strategy. 

Basing on its rich cultural resources such as Confucianism and revolution-era tourism (also called "red tourism"), and its distinctive natural features like a long coastline and the Taiyi mountain areas, Shandong will carry out a series of beautiful village construction pilot projects. 

This year the province will select 50 villages as first pilots to explore the working mechanisms, technical standards and supporting policies of the beautiful village project. 

The province will select 100 and 150 villages in 2019 and 2020 respectively to carry out provincial-level pilot projects. Cities and counties (districts) will take measures on the basis of local reality and conditions to complete them. 

From 2020 to 2025, the province will expand the experiment to build a beautiful countryside and create clusters of villages with Shandong features. 

The Shandong provincial department of housing and urban-rural development will formulate guidelines for the design and construction of the beautiful village project and establish an expert committee to carry out technical reviews of the pilot projects. 

Local designers and architects are encouraged to participate. On-site designer systems will be implemented in the beautiful village construction. 

Academic organizations, research institutes and universities and colleges are encouraged to conduct relevant research in rural design, construction and development. 

A government and Party delegation from Shandong recently also visited a village in East China's Zhejiang province to learn about the experience of building a beautiful village that is prosperous, beautiful, civilized and livable.                                            

Jiushan town in Linqu county of Weifang, Shandong province has been selected as one of the province's most beautiful villages. [Photo/WeChat account: LINQU-REN] 

Shandong boasts one of the cradles of Chinese civilization and is the birthplace of Confucius and his major disciple Mencius. [Photo/sdchina.com] 

A splendid view of Laoshan district in Qingdao, Shandong province. At early morning, as the rising sun breaks through the thick clouds, the morning glow is mirrored in the sea, forming one image. [Photo by Xu Kun/dailyqd.com]