Yaocheng Village is located within Yanfeng Town, Guilin Yang, Haikou. The houses and courtyards date back to the Qing Dynasty and it has a rich culture and history, people lived and worked in Yaocheng village as far back as 400 years ago.
The village has four surnames: Fu, Weng, Liang and Yan. Among them, the Fu surname being the majority with 197 households (around 633 people) carrying the name.
There are around 360 households in the village with a total population of 1,463 people. The whole village covers an area of 3,500 mu.
Interesting to note is that the village has more than 30 trees over 100 years old.
The ancient village of Yaocheng began in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, the 57th Sun Fu Guanmei, the first ancestor of the Hainan Fu family was born in Anren county and moved to Yangshuntu, Waifengyi township, Qiongshan county.
He took his sons to live in three places. The eldest lived in Xibian village, the second and third lived to the west in a place called Xipai village and the fourth lived in the east in Qunlong village.
Around the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the three villages were successfully joined and named Yaocheng village.
According to records, the village was also used as a revolutionary base for resistance struggles against the Japanese army. It is said that more than 70 young men and women from the village joined the Qiongya Anti-Japanese army.
Since the reform and opening up, Yaocheng village hasn’t done so well and the capita per income has been relatively low. It had a population of around 1,900 people, and less than one-third of the people remained in the village.
After 1990, local hero and village leader Fu Shicheng stepped up and took it upon himself to make some changes in the village.
He discovered that the village had a shortage of land for the development of the rural economy. At that time the village had around 1,440 acres of land but only 70 acres were used. Around 200 acres were allocated for cemeteries and the remaining 1,000 were difficult to use.
Fu formulated a village development plan adjusting 200 acres of cemetery to 10 acres and the remaining 190 were to be used for construction land.
Since 1995 Yaocheng village has re-drawn road and housing plans relocating dilapidated houses throughout the village and freeing up land occupied by old houses and old roads as agricultural land.
In 1999 the capacity of the village was expanded. The three ancient villages of Xibian, Xipai and Qunloing were moved to the south to rebuild the Yaocheng new village.
At the end of 2009, 80 new buildings were constructed and 30 buildings were rebuilt which were then expanded in 2015.
After the establishment of Hainan Free Trade Port, significant changes have taken place in the redevelopment of Yaocheng Village.
Nowadays, the planting industry, breeding industry and rural tourism in Yaocheng Village have all undergone development. With the help of Internet marketing, homegrown sweet potatoes in the village have become famous.
The abandoned old houses of the villagers have been transformed into themed homestay projects with original ecological characteristics. Local villagers can not only get shares and get dividends but also find jobs and earn wages in the projects.
Location
The village is located in Meilan district within the Yanfeng area. Also nearby are the Dongzhaigang mangroves and the Haiwen bridge.
Address: 海口美兰瑶成村
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