Polyculture breathes new life into shoreline

Cultural lives

After the restoration project, Tianjin gave 1 million yuan toward the expansion of an existing museum in Xingjiatuo village.

The Xingjia Family Folk Museum had previously been privately funded by Ma Zhende, who began work on it in 2014.

"The project helped us expand to 6,600 square meters, turning this into the largest folk museum in the city," Ma said.

Ma's collection of old family furniture and tools dating from different periods during the last seven decades has garnered widespread interest. He has started organizing cultural activities for the villagers, including summer camps for teenagers on the museum grounds.

In Penguan (meaning "basin and pot" in Chinese) village, where pottery has been made for more than 2,000 years, tourism is booming.

Han Kesheng, an inheritor of the village's pottery making tradition, said that he is delighted to see more visitors, and added that 150 potters have come to work in the village because the district is supporting the pottery business and has included it in an overall strategy integrating culture and tourism.

"Thanks to the strategy, my workshop has been renovated, and new homestays for pottery fans have been built over the last two years," he said.