At sunrise in Sanshi village, Chen Chunan walks through the tea bushes that seem to climb endlessly up the hills. Rows of green leaves cover the slopes in careful lines, glistening as morning mist lifts from the valleys of Jingning She autonomous county in southern Zhejiang province.

Chen, a former Party branch secretary of Sanshi, recalled that two decades ago, the mountainous village offered little income. The soil was unforgiving, investment scarce, and few villagers believed tea grown here could sustain a livelihood, he said.

Midway up a hill, he paused and pointed to a ridge above the fields — the exact spot where he stood one evening in August 2005 waiting for Xi Jinping, then Party chief of Zhejiang province, to arrive for an inspection.

After surveying the hillside and listening to Chen's introduction, Xi encouraged villagers to build a tea-leaf trading market, establish processing facilities and strengthen branding. "He saw real potential in the tea industry and encouraged us to make the ecological economy bigger and stronger," Chen said.

Over time, barren slopes were converted into productive tea gardens. Today, almost no arable land lies idle, and annual incomes from tea range from about 20,000 yuan ($2,898) to more than 300,000 yuan for some households.

The transformation of the village reflects a broader turning point for Jingning, China's only She ethnic autonomous county and one of the least-developed regions in Zhejiang.

During his tenure in Zhejiang, Xi conducted field research in the county in 2002 and 2005, visiting villages, meeting farmers, inspecting tea plantations and discussing development strategies.

In 2006, Xi called for targeted policy support to help the county "keep pace with the times", signaling that mountainous and ethnic regions required differentiated development strategies rather than uniform growth models.

Guo Zhanheng, former deputy head of the policy research office of the Communist Party of China Zhejiang Provincial Committee, said that promoting common prosperity was already central to Xi's policymaking at the time.

"He emphasized that development should serve the people, rely on the people and allow its benefits to be shared by the people," Guo said.

At a conference in 2005, Xi emphasized accelerating economic and social development in minority regions, narrowing regional gaps and ultimately achieving common prosperity for all ethnic groups.

The approach sought to reconcile growth with equity at a time when coastal Zhejiang was surging ahead, but mountainous counties lagged behind.

The philosophy epitomized Zhejiang's broader development framework, including policies embedded in the Double Eight Strategy, which balanced economic dynamism with ecological protection and regional coordination.

Among its most consequential initiatives was the "mountain and sea coordination and collaboration project", which was launched in 2003, pairing wealthier coastal cities with less-developed inland and island counties.

Wang Weifei, executive vice-president of the Party school of Jingning, said the county became one of the largest beneficiaries of that policy.

Xi emphasized at that time that "economic equality is the foundation of ethnic equality", directing resources, investment and industrial support toward minority regions, Wang said.

Tailored assistance measures for each mountainous and island county have continued for more than two decades, reflecting a long-term approach in which successive administrations followed a single development blueprint, Wang said.

"Many people saw only the development gap and weak internal momentum. But in Xi's eyes, Jingning had good mountains, good water and clean air — advantages waiting to be transformed," he said.

In a reply letter in 2024, marking the county's 40th anniversary, Xi, now Chinese president and general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, urged Jingning to continue pursuing high-quality development and common prosperity, reinforcing what local officials describe as a commitment to follow a consistent development blueprint across generations of leadership.

In Jingning, those measures translated into gradual but tangible economic change. Tea cultivation expanded, transportation links improved and local industries diversified.

From 2021 to 2025, Jingning's per capita disposable income rose from 31,130 yuan to 44,723 yuan, surpassing the national average for the first time. Urban and rural incomes increased from 41,735 yuan and 21,625 yuan to 55,707 yuan and 32,471 yuan, respectively, placing Jingning in the top five in both categories among China's 120 ethnic autonomous counties.

Jobs increasingly moved closer to villages, reducing the need for villagers to pursue livelihoods elsewhere.

Just beyond a traditional She ethnic village, Wu Yong tends rows of succulents inside a cluster of glass greenhouses perched on the foot of a mountain. Wu's business operates as what local officials call a "common prosperity workshop", part of a broader experiment in Zhejiang to bring economic opportunity closer to rural homes.

Villagers lease their land to the cooperative for stable rental income, work nearby for wages and receive free training in planting and cultivation. "We kept thinking about how to use the strengths of our She hometown to bring shared prosperity to more villagers," Wu said.

In a county where flat farmland is scarce and mountains dominate the landscape, greenhouse agriculture has created a new possibility. "The purpose of the workshop is to let more people participate and benefit together," Wu said.

Cultural revival

As living standards improved, economic change increasingly intersected with cultural revival.

Luo Shi, a She ethnic online novelist, draws inspiration from village life for her stories. Her work follows a young woman whose personal growth helps transform a struggling She ethnic village, weaving traditional songs, rituals, medicine and daily rural life into contemporary storytelling.

"I see myself as a recorder," Luo said. "In small villages and counties, there is life everywhere — and that is also wealth for creative inspiration."

Cultural heritage has similarly become an economic resource.

Lan Yanlan, a recognized inheritor of the She ethnic ribbon-weaving, displays brightly colored ribbons whose intricate patterns require years of skill to create. "The ribbons look simple, but weaving them is difficult. Your hands must be fast and your eyes sharp," she said.

With the She ethnic ribbon-weaving recognized as national cultural heritage in 2021, more artisans have joined the craft, and the products once made mainly for ceremonies have entered commercial markets.

"Now we can sell them," Lan said. "When more people weave, more families can follow the path to prosperity."

The transformation unfolding in Jingning reflects a wider provincial experiment. In 2021, Zhejiang became China's first demonstration zone for common prosperity, tasked with exploring ways to narrow income disparities while sustaining economic momentum.

By 2025, the province's per capita disposable income surpassed 70,000 yuan, with urban and rural incomes exceeding 80,000 yuan and 45,000 yuan, respectively, ranking among the highest nationwide.

The urban-rural income ratio narrowed from 1.96 to 1.81 during the 2021-25 period, while the urbanization rate rose from 72 percent to about 76 percent.

The provincial government's work report this year reaffirmed the Double Eight Strategy as the province's overarching framework, calling for integrated urban-rural development, expanded "common prosperity workshops", strengthened mountain-sea cooperation and targeted support for revolutionary base areas and ethnic regions.

The plan aims to broaden income channels for farmers, promote employment opportunities and ensure that "everyone has work to do and every household has income".

Back in Sanshi village, the harvesting of tea begins as sunlight spreads across the hills. Workers move between rows carrying baskets filled with fresh tea leaves, while Chen watches quietly from the slope.

The change, he said, is most visible not in statistics but in the choices people now have — whether to remain in their native village, return there, or start businesses close to home.

"Previously, young people had to leave. Now, some are coming back," Chen said.

Contact the writers at xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn