The Tsinghua Press Salon: Poverty Alleviation organized by the Global Communication Office was held at the Tsinghua Future Media Lab on Tuesday.
The salon invited representatives of the Rural Revitalization Workstation, a poverty alleviation program initiated by Tsinghua’s School of Architecture, to share their experiences in poverty alleviation and rural revitalization in China, attracting around 20 journalists from national and international media, including Agence France-Presse (AFP), BBC, CCTV, CGTN, China Daily, the Financial Times, Reuters, Russia Today, People’s Daily, the South China Morning Post, and Xinhua News Agency.
Chen Ken, Director of the Global Communication Office, moderated the event.
Zhang Hong, Associate Professor of the School of Architecture, gave an overview of the program. He said that the program aimed to reconstruct discarded housing resources in rural areas using novel and cost-effective architectural designs, and cultivate local talents and support them in the creative design of local cultural and food products, creating tourism and business potentials for them to make sustainable income in the long term.
According to him, students – both domestic and international – along with a large number of professors from various disciplines have contributed by heading to rural areas, setting up rural revitalization workstations, and working closely with local communities to help improve their living conditions.
He expects Tsinghua’s rural revitalization initiatives to gradually cover a wide range of countries as part of the Belt and Road Initiative in the future.
“There are projects related to the BRI and overseas expansion, one of which has already been initiated in Sri Lanka, but because of the epidemic, rural services have not been fully deployed. Similar projects have also spread to India and South Africa,” he said.
Cheng Zhengyu, a student initiator of the program, recounted his experience working at the rural revitalization workstation in a fishing village on Yushan Island of Fujian province.
“In the future, more teams and professionals are needed to help rural development. I hope prospective young people can return to the countryside to help with local development,” he added.
During his presentation, Cheng played a video message by one of his teammates Chin Pey Ting, a Tsinghua alumna from Malaysia. Chin said getting onto Tsinghua’s rural revitalization project has taught her a lot about design.
“I believe there will be more and more passionate international students like myself participating in such efforts in the future,” she said.
Li Jiutai, an alumnus of the school and head of the Workstation in Wendeng, Shandong Province, said he was inspired to go to rural areas and serve locals as he was a country-born child himself and a former Tsinghua student.
Li said the renovation his team did to old abandoned houses during his time at the Wendeng workstation has transformed the village into a potential tourism hub and opened up more business opportunities for villagers.
“I am glad to see more and more designers coming together to participate in the revitalization of the countryside after what we have achieved in Wendeng. I hope that the recent rural revitalization efforts made across the country will make rural areas more attractive for Chinese people to live in the days to come,” Li said.
Reporters: Gao Kejing, Sangeet Sangroula
Editors: Lin Lu, John Olbrich
