Xiapu County: A viral tourist destination for nostalgic rural photography

In Xiapu, Fujian province, residents have gained fame by creating picturesque rural scenes for tourists, charging up to 300 yuan for photos.

A wizened farmer leads a buffalo through a misty copse of gnarled trees in eastern China, closely followed by a woman in a straw hat heaving pails of water. It is a tranquil image of rural Chinese life -- except for the overhead whirr of a drone, the hiss of a smoke machine and the excited chatter of smartphone-wielding day-trippers.

Residents in Xiapu, Fujian province, have achieved viral online fame by staging picturesque country scenes and charging tourists up to 300 yuan ($40) to photograph them. By doing so, they indulge visitors' nostalgia for a pastoral idyll that perhaps never truly existed and has been swept away by rampant urbanisation and industrial development.

"Back in the day, when we were sent down to the countryside, we used buffalo for ploughing," said Liang Liuling, 72, on holiday from the southwestern Guangxi region. In the 1960s and 70s, her generation toiled for years in rural backwaters during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution -- though many remember their hardships fondly. "Now, they've become props for us elderly to enjoy," Liang said, smiling after posing for shots with the animals. “Seeing them here is just wonderful.”

Farming clicks

About 20 percent of Chinese people lived in cities in 1980, compared to around two-thirds today -- a result of the country's rapid development. The jarring shift in living styles feeds a trend for reminiscing about economically leaner but arguably simpler times.

A search for Xiapu county -- population 480,000, small by Chinese standards -- returns hundreds of thousands of posts on the country's version of TikTok and on Xiaohongshu, known as Red Note in English.

Many users flaunt stunning photographs of supposedly timeless scenes and offer guides on how to create the best shots. That the vista is manufactured does not seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of the coachloads of daily visitors.

"We saw this scenic spot online and changed our plans at the last minute to come", said tour guide Huang Jumei as she led a group of people mainly over 60, adding that they were "reluctant to leave".

"It brings back childhood memories for many of us who come from farming families... but as life has improved, most families stopped keeping cattle," she told AFP.

Nostalgia trip

Visitors must thrash out a price with buffalo owner Chen Weizuo before he steps in front of the cameras. The 62-year-old poses several times a day and rents costumes for extra income. Originally a farmer, a decade ago he borrowed a fellow villager's buffalo and began charging a trickle of mostly local tourists for photos.

Larger groups began arriving a few years back, and he imported his own bovine from Vietnam as "no one in China sells buffaloes anymore". While his customers revel in nostalgia, Chen is glad to have shaken off his former life working the fields.

"Now, I spend my days under the banyan trees. In the summer it's cool, and when guests come I chat and joke with them," he said. "It's much more relaxed," he told AFP, adding: "I'm not into taking photos myself."