China has relaxed its rules to allow farmers to transfer their land rights in an effort to increase their income. A program called "Shared farm villa" is aimed at helping farmers cash in on their idle land. The villas have drawn interest from city dwellers tired of the concrete jungle.

The speed of China's urbanization effort is moving fast. It's said that about 10 million rural Chinese move to the cities every year. While many flee the countryside for the comforts and opportunities big cities offer, some urban dwellers are doing the opposite.

Song Bo, a Yoga teacher, said: "The nature helps us calm down and better enjoy yoga. Previously I took trainees to parks to do 'outdoor yoga,' but it doesn't have privacy like we have here."

Song has been in Beijing for 13 years and has run a yoga club for four. Song is an avid yoga practitioner and has written a book on it. She has 200 regular students but isn't satisfied with just teaching yoga within the confines of a studio. She also wants her students to experience "outdoor yoga." This is why she rents a farm villa in the Miyun District and plans to take them there during the weekend.

For 40 percent of the price she pays to rent a studio in the city, she can rent a whole villa. With a common space, bedrooms and a yard, it's an ideal locale for arranging a quality weekend for students. Fresh air brings good feelings to the body, and these yogis can breathe deeply and even do some postures they cannot do indoors.

Song is one of the first groups of patrons of these newly built farm villas in Miyun District. The bedrooms here are like those you can find in a luxury hotel, but the public space makes it more functional than a hotel. It can be a pub, coffee bar, or dining place. So the villa is not only fit for accommodating tourists, but also for all kinds of gatherings.

"Shared farm villa" means city residents sharing a villa with farmers. In the past, Chinese farmers couldn't rent their idle land to others, because the ownership of the land belongs to the group. The new land law enables farmers to transfer their "right to use" to others, which means farmers can make money from their otherwise "dead" property. But farmers lack fund and skills to turn their land into something profitable, and that's where "Shared farm villa" comes in.

Zhong Quefei, initiator of "Shared farm villa" program noted that China's 30 years of urbanization have driven talents, skills and capital flow to the cities. So there is so much in the countryside that is left idle and even dilapidated.

"People are not using them. I hope the land and the nature can draw people back to the countryside, with new skills, capital, ideas, industries and designs pouring in, so that the countryside can be popular again," Zhong added.

Zhang Hezhao, a local farmer, said: "The land had been idle for years. And the houses were in a very bad condition. Now I can earn 30 thousand yuan every year from the renting contract."

The farmer who rents the land to Zhong's company, where a villa is built, is satisfied with the stable income from the rent.

Zhong also runs an app to help farmers transfer their idle land. Three years ago, only a small number of trading deals were done through the app. Now, it's more than 1,000 deals per year. And the market potential is huge. There are 100 thousand pieces of idle land in Beijing. Zhong hopes these "Shared farm villas" can not only draw people who like an idyllic life, but also industries that do not need an urban environment.

Enjoying the closeness of nature doesn't have to come at the expense of abandoning the comfort of urban life. There will soon be about 200 of these farm villas in five villages that are just an hour's drive from central Beijing.