On January 6, as night fell, one by one solar-powered streetlights began to glow brightly in Dongxiacao Village, Baiyangping Town, Enshi City—a town nestled among rolling mountains—adding a touch of warmth to the mountain village.
　　The dragon chases the lake’s clear waters, and the banks are lush and green; the winter plum blossoms are in full bloom, their vibrant hues dazzling. On the lake’s surface, the waves shimmer and glisten, while seagulls soar gracefully through the air.
　　The village’s environmental meteorological monitoring data platform shows that the concentration of negative oxygen ions in the air is 2,550 per cubic centimeter, significantly higher than the Class 1 standard of 1,000 per cubic centimeter, which is highly beneficial to human health.
　　Tang Jiwen, the Party branch secretary of the village, said that in June 2021, Dongxiacao Village became a provincial pilot village for near-zero carbon emissions. Over the past year and more, the village has promoted household biogas systems, energy-efficient cooking and heating appliances, solar streetlights, and solar water heaters, with new energy sources accounting for over 85%.
　　The area of organically certified tea gardens exceeds 1,400 mu. Dongxiacao Village is located more than 20 kilometers from the urban area of Enshi City. With its winding mountain roads and inconvenient transportation, it was once a nationally designated deeply impoverished village.
　　“We’ve conducted extensive explorations and ultimately decided to pursue an integrated development approach that combines tea tourism, cultural tourism, and agricultural tourism,” said Tang Jiwen.
　　Dongxiacao Village has implemented industry-based poverty alleviation policies, providing subsidies and rewards to 264 impoverished households engaged in agricultural production. At the same time, the village has made large-scale purchases of tea seedlings to promote the replanting and new planting of tea gardens.
　　Villagers have enthusiastically taken up tea cultivation. In 2017, the village’s total tea plantation area reached 11,000 mu, and Dongxiacao Village successfully lifted its entire village out of poverty through targeted poverty alleviation efforts.
　　Currently, Dongxiacao Village is home to two sizable tea-processing enterprises. To meet the enterprises’ requirements for fresh leaves, the entire village has banned large-scale livestock farming, prohibited the burning of straw, the setting off of fireworks and firecrackers, and deforestation for agricultural purposes. The tea gardens are subject to high-standard, unified pest-control measures, completely eliminating the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The area of tea gardens certified as organic exceeds 1,400 mu.
　　In 2021, the village’s tea industry achieved a combined output value exceeding 100 million yuan. The village’s collective income surpassed 300,000 yuan, and the villagers’ average annual income reached 18,000 yuan.
　　The water quality of Longgan Lake has consistently remained at Class II or better. Standing atop the tea garden trail, at an elevation of over 800 meters, you can take in a panoramic view of Dongxia Cao Village: on the tea hills, ancient-style pavilions with elegantly curved eaves and upturned corners seem to float in the air; the 10-kilometer-long trail winds its way through the landscape in a serpentine pattern. At the foot of the mountain, lush trees provide shade, while pavilions and waterside pavilions are nestled among them; here and there, houses with white walls and gray tiles peek through the greenery.
　　The tea plantations covering the hillsides beautifully complement a stretch of emerald-green waters. Tang Jiwen recounted the origin of the Longgan Lake Scenic Area: In 2018, Yang Jia Shou, who had spent over 30 years working away from home, returned to his village to start a business. He leased a low-lying plot of land—over 150 mu—in the lower reaches of the Longgan Creek and transformed it into an artificial lake, naming it Longgan Lake. He then invested in constructing water-based recreational facilities, restaurants and hotels, as well as a cycling path环绕 the lake. In August 2020, the Longgan Lake Scenic Area was completed and opened to the public; at its peak, daily visitor numbers reached over 4,000.
　　To protect the pristine waters of the lake, Dongxiacao Village has taken advantage of the rural water and sanitation improvement policies by installing a sewage collection network system, constructing septic tanks for contiguous groups of households, building individual biogas digesters for single households, and establishing an artificial wetland around the lake. As a result, 100 percent of domestic wastewater from villagers and tourists, as well as human and animal excrement, is collected and treated, meeting Class I discharge standards. Consequently, the water quality of Longgan Lake has consistently remained at or above Class II levels over the years.
　　Villagers have achieved a 99% rate of waste sorting. As the agritourism industry heats up, over 300 villagers have returned in recent years to work or run farmstay businesses.
　　Villager Tang Xuchang runs a farmstay by Longgan Lake. He says, “Last year, affected by the pandemic, my farmstay was open for only half a year, and my income was just over 100,000 yuan.”
　　The villagers all recognize the benefits of developing the agritourism industry. Everyone now uniformly uses clean fuels such as ethanol and biogas, minimizing the use of coal gas; more than half of the households in the village now rely on biogas.
　　In the evening, after seeing off the last group of guests, Mr. and Mrs. Tang Xuchang sorted their kitchen waste and other household garbage into plastic bags, then disposed of them separately into bins marked “Food Waste” and “Other Waste” placed in front of their door.
　　Tang Jiwen introduced that the entire village is equipped with more than 260 sorted waste bins. When a bin becomes full, a smart monitoring device sends an alert signal via the smart waste collection platform directly to Zhang Xingcai’s mobile app. Every day around 7 a.m., Zhang Xingcai drives a sealed waste collection vehicle and follows the route automatically planned by the app to collect garbage. The village has two standardized waste transfer stations, and villagers achieve a 99% rate of proper waste sorting—effectively realizing household sorting, village-level collection, town-level transportation, and city-level processing.
　　The village has also introduced a bus route to the Xiongjiayan Village market and built seven-seat bus shelters. The entire village has more than 500 cars, but villagers generally choose to take the bus—economical and environmentally friendly.
　　To promote the pilot program for near-zero-carbon villages, the village has installed over 420 solar-powered streetlights and built nearly 20 sets of equipment, including miniature meteorological stations and monitoring systems for air quality, soil, and water. Induction-based energy-saving lighting fixtures have been installed and are in use in public restrooms, corridors, and other areas. More than 180 households now use solar water heaters, and the village’s forest coverage rate has reached 85%.
　　“This year, we will implement distributed rooftop solar photovoltaic projects and build a number of charging stations for new-energy vehicles. We’ll also replace traditional firewood and charcoal heating with clean, safe, and energy-efficient heating methods, further embedding the concept of low-carbon and environmental protection in people’s hearts,” said Tang Jiwen. (Zhang Quan, Cai Jun, Lu Shubin)