'Mushroom village' leverages Wuxia writer's fame, zero carbon for brighter future

Louis Cha, pen name Jin Yong, was a Chinese novelist and essayist, considered one of the pioneers of the Chinese Wuxia literature genre. His hometown is Haining City in east China's Zhejiang Province.

For many years, a third of the farmers in the Changxiao Village, Haining City in Zhejiang Province have raised pigs, producing over 20,000 pigs every year. However, raising pigs produces a large amount of excrement and wastewater. Over time, with the development and changes in the economic and social aspects, villagers gradually realized the need for industrial transformation.

In 2015, after the cessation of the pig farming industry in the village, the local government took active steps to help villagers solve the challenges of industrial transformation. After a series of research, the village Party secretary, Xu Guochu, learned about the high-profit, low-pollution industry of edible mushroom cultivation. Though this idea garnered support from the villagers, their lack of knowledge about mushroom farming resulted in less-than-ideal profits: mushrooms require a relatively high temperature, which was a challenge for Xu and the villagers.

A turning point arrived with the help of the State Grid Haining Power Supply Company. After understanding the situation, the company provided the village with an agricultural photovoltaic integration solution known as "mushroom cultivation underneath solar panels and power generation on top of the panels." The solution involved installing photovoltaic panels on the top of mushroom greenhouses. The panels provided shade and rain protection and utilized clean energy to power equipment, maintaining the temperature and humidity within the appropriate range in the greenhouse. This project simultaneously improved the mushroom growth environment and incorporated clean energy sources.

From 2012 to 2015, the power supply company renovated the core area's electrical lines in the village, enhancing the power supply capacity. As a result, an increasing number of mushroom greenhouses equipped with photovoltaic panels were established, and the mushroom cultivation industry replaced pig farming as one of the pillar industries in Changxiao Village. Over the next few years, the agricultural photovoltaic integration greenhouses, where electricity was generated on the roofs while mushrooms were cultivated underneath, drew the attention of large-scale mushroom planting contractors from various parts of the country to settle in Changxiao Village.

By 2022, the revenue solely generated from the photovoltaic power generation on the roofs of the mushroom base in Changxiao Village amounted to over 5.9 million yuan (about $830,110), contributing over 800,000 yuan to the collective economic income of the village.

In 2023, the mushroom cultivation base in Changxiao Village underwent a new round of upgrades: Over 20 greenhouses were subjected to intelligent transformation. These revamped mushroom greenhouses incorporated advanced digital devices, such as temperature control equipment, enabling year-round cultivation of mushrooms.

Simultaneously, other changes were occurring outside the greenhouses in the village. As of 2021, Xu started leveraging the village as Jin Yong's hometown, establishing a village boutique brand that integrates the natural landscape of the Jiangnan water towns with distinctive agricultural characteristics to develop various rural tourism projects. Farms, parks, camping sites, bamboo culture centers, and coffee houses started to emerge like mushrooms after the rain. With the support of these low-carbon techniques and resources, Changxiao Village officially became a "zero-carbon village."

(All photos provided by He Jijiang, executive deputy director of the Research Center for Energy Transition and Social Development at Tsinghua University)