Anji County in northern Zhejiang Province was designated as Eco-Friendly County in 2006 by the State Administration of Environment Protection (now Ministry of Environment Protection). The county attained this accolade because it has set up twelve national model villages of environmental beauty in its county-wide endeavor to build up an eco-friendly life mode in its rural areas. Gaojiatang Village is the county’s first model eco-friendly village.

Situated 23 kilometers from the county capital， the village of 234 households spreads at the foot of mountains and along a reservoir. Nowadays， the reservoir looks like a pearl embedded among bamboo forests and serves as a nice foreground for the village of storied houses. However， the reservoir used to be something like a cesspool， recipient of discharged wastes from the village. Today， the village adopts a sanitary maintenance system to keep the village clean. Garbage handlers clean the village every day and collect garbage which is sorted out by each household beforehand. Organic garbage is then heaped in a treatment site to mature as manure to be used for bamboo groves. Collectable garbage is picked up by the handlers; the rest of the garbage is transported to a garbage station where it is compressed and treated before being delivered to a county treatment center. The system， which runs into difficulty in most urban areas， operates smoothly and effectively in the village.

The village has installed AquaMats Technology to treat its wastewater. The system now handles 40-50 tons of the household wastewater of the village per day. The treatment pond measures nearly 300 square meters where aquatic plants grow. Submerged in the water are arrays of AquaMats， which look like water vegetation. The technology is highly cost-effective and efficient. It is said that the average daily treatment cost is no more than one yuan. The treated water is reused to irrigate vegetables and other crops and flush eco-friendly public toilets in the village.

Most houses in the village are installed with rooftop solar-energy water heaters. The street lighting system in the village is solar powered and light-sensitive to turn on and off the lamps automatically. The village has now built a new bridge to connect itself with the outside world and broadened its mains streets lined with green belts. The discharge of the village industrial effluent meets the national environment standards 100% and the air-quality meets the class 1 standard. Foreign experts have inspected the village and comment that the village is really a model of environment protection.

The ecological improvements have resulted from new attitudes of villagers. Villager Chen Jinlong observes， “We used to disregard environment totally and think only about incomes. Nowadays we are fully aware of the importance of environment protection. If we disregard environment， we may earn some more money but the mountains and waters around the village will be totally cursed and all of us will suffer.” Nowadays， environment protection is a public virtue maintained conscientiously by the villagers of Gaojiatang. One day， a busload of tourists on their way to a nearby major tourist attraction stopped at the village for a short break. A tourist casually tossed an empty plastic water bottle out of the bus. A village woman in her 70s picked up the bottle and chided the culprit. Another tourist wrote the tiny incident and sent it to a newspaper in Shanghai. When the story came out， many readers were impressed and gave thumbs up for the villagers of Gaojiatang.

Nowadays， villagers of Gaojiatang use energy-saving and sanitary equipments for everyday life. They use tap water and cooking gas and they take shower， a luxury they dared not dream of before. The village economy rests on bamboo groves， tea processing， and chicken farming in an eco-friendly way in its 620-hectare forests of bamboos and trees. Tourism has become a new income source. Many a household has turned its home into a restaurant and boarding business. Urban residents in nearby cities such as Shanghai， Hangzhou and Suzhou drive to these tiny restaurants to have banquets of local pollution-free food and enjoy a peaceful rural life for a day or two.

Gaojiatang is now a brand new rural community in more than one sense. The village has a cultural center， a library， a posters corridor that promotes ecological lifestyle， a sports ground， a medical clinic and a viewing pavilion. The village has a female waist-drum performance team， a mountaineering team and a basketball team.□