Village guesthouses create prosperity at home

There's a Japanese-style garden and dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows, and its best quadruple room is priced at 2,880 yuan ($431) per night, with rooms usually fully booked during the peak season, from spring to autumn.

Such amenities and prices were once only confined to hotel in urban areas in China. But this top-level guesthouse, Luoqi, is located in Guojiagou, a village in Tianjin that's just a two-hour drive from Beijing.

In fact, this village offers tourists a variety of accommodation options both in style and in price. Basic rooms, rated according to a unified standard, go for 100 to 400 yuan per night.

Far from the city center and Port of Tianjian, Guojiagou used to be a poor village in mountainous area. With per capita annual income less than 5,000 yuan at the beginning of the 21st century, villagers used to make their living mainly through farming, planting or being migrant workers in city.