Xixinan, a village in Anhui province near Huangshan, blew up on Chinese social media in 2023 thanks to photos of its almost unreal greenery. Viral fame is usually a double-edged sword for small rural places — a flood of day-trippers, little revenue, and jealous neighbours. This village solved it with an unusual plan: no entrance fee, and a formal revenue-sharing deal with five surrounding villages.
The story comes via People's Daily's video series Decoding Rural China's Governance, whose latest episode follows what has become a six-village tourism cluster. Instead of each village fighting for the same visitors, they built complementary attractions and stitched them into one route: bamboo raft rides, a sightseeing train, homestays and evening fish-lantern tours. The point of the linked route is simple — keep people in the area overnight so more local businesses get a slice of the spending.
The money side is where it gets genuinely interesting. Of the revenue from any business, 70% stays with the village where it operates, 20% is split by an agreed equity formula (Xixinan holds 5%, the other five villages 3% each), and 10% goes to the town's operating company as working capital. So the viral village benefits, but so does everyone around it, and each village still has an incentive to develop its own distinctive offerings rather than copy each other.
The results are measurable. More than 70% of residents in the town now work in tourism, and in 2025 every village in the cluster generated over 1 million yuan (roughly $140,000) in revenue.
Why should travellers care? Because this is exactly the kind of place mass tourism hasn't yet flattened. The area sits in the Huizhou heartland near Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), one of China's most famous scenic regions, with centuries-old merchant villages, whitewashed houses and misty hills. Xixinan and its neighbours offer the slower, softer version of that trip — rafts on quiet rivers, lantern-lit nights, family-run homestays — at a fraction of the crowds you'll find at the big-name sites. The cluster model also means your money spreads across several communities rather than pooling at a single ticket gate, which is a decent reason to linger an extra day.
If you're plotting an Anhui itinerary, this corner pairs naturally with Hongcun and Xidi, the UNESCO-listed ancient villages further afield, plus a hike up Huangshan itself. Come in spring or autumn for the best mix of greenery and manageable weather.
