Paving Paradise: Behind China’s Rural Building Boom
China’s rural land is seeing a building boom as villagers exercise their homestead rights—but is it sustainable?
Every weekend, a mere one-hour drive from downtown Chengdu takes Ye Zi and her husband to an alluring mansion of over 200 square meters in Sichuan province, where they live an envious life: chatting with friends under a grapefruit tree, feeding fish in the pond, cooking barbecue in the yard, or just lounging in the beautiful rural surroundings. But this isn’t another “influencer” guesthouse catering to urbanites in a remote village—it’s Ye’s home.
Ye, a 30-year-old engineer who owns an apartment in Chengdu, decided to renovate her family’s ancestral home last September to turn it into a more comfortable space for her aging parents, who haven’t been able to adapt to urban life. “[Our apartment in Chengdu] is less than a hundred square meters. When we close the door, there is no more space for other activities,” explains Ye. “Everyone’s life is separated; our neighbors don’t know one another.”
As of the end of 2019, China had more than 11 million hectares of “homestead land,” or zhaijidi (宅基地), which is rural land reserved for housing construction. Though a growing number of people are flocking to cities, leaving farmlands empty or repurposed for industry and government construction, there are signs that rural homestead land is coming back to life.
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