Feng Fuping, a villager in the outskirts of Guiyang, Guizhou province, benefits from an emerging digital economy developed in her hometown by selling fried potatoes and noodles.

"In the past, I had to leave home to find work. Now I can earn money right here," Feng told local media. Her 40-square-meter courtyard now doubles as a small stall, bringing in 4,000 to 5,000 yuan ($582 to $728) a month and allowing her to stay close to home.

Feng lives in Gaozhai, the core village in Xiaolanshan, a project related to the digital cultural industry that links seven villages in Guiyang's Guanshanhu district near Baihua Lake. The place offers low costs, a good natural environment, convenient transportation, and strong computing capabilities.

Three years ago, Gaozhai was still a traditional village marked by abandoned chicken sheds and idle houses. Today, it is attracting digital audio-visual, data-annotation and other creative businesses as part of a wider rural vitalization drive.

Local authorities say Xiaolanshan is being developed as an industrial project and as a platform where digital businesses, village culture and everyday rural life are meant to grow together.

The project now hosts around 50 related companies and has attracted more than 600 digital nomads and workers, helping to form a digital industry ecosystem spanning content production, technology development and scenario-based applications. It was selected as one of China's second batch of national pilot projects for digital villages in 2024.

What sets Xiaolanshan apart is how little of it was built from scratch. Instead of clearing the village and starting over, local officials and project operators chose to reuse what was already there.

Lin Xiang, Gaozhai's Party secretary, said the village had gone from a coal-mining settlement to a farming village before finding the new path in the digital economy. "Without rebuilding the village or tearing down villagers' homes, we turned disused chicken sheds and empty houses into industrial space," he said.

At the core of the model is a new mechanism for repurposing collectively owned village construction land, with idle assets pooled and returned to use through arrangements such as company-cooperative partnerships.

Fu Lidong, director of the project, told local media that only 17.6 hectares of new construction land is available, while the real asset lies in 266 vacant rural buildings covering around 100,000 square meters.

For companies, the attraction goes beyond the setting around Baihua Lake. Wang Junzhu, who works on investment promotion for Guizhou Colorful New Media, said firms were also drawn by a lighter, lower-cost model that lets them move into renovated village spaces.

Backed by Guiyang's computing power, Xiaolanshan has developed three digital industry chains centered on audio-visual content production, scenario-based applications and data annotation. Local media reports said its digital-economy output exceeded 800 million yuan in 2025.

The shift is showing up clearly in household finances. More than 80 villagers now have stable local jobs while also benefiting from rental income from once-idle houses, Fu told the local media.

Liu Juanjuan, a villager in Gaozhai, renovated her three-story house in 2024 and now earns nearly 40,000 yuan in rent per year. With help from some younger newcomers, she has also learned how to make short videos and livestream village food and scenery online.

The project is also reshaping village life. Volunteer teams and community activities have been organized to help local residents and new arrivals mix more easily, while bookshops and other cultural spaces have begun to appear.

At the same time, the area has retained much of its rural and ecological character. Xiaolanshan has had to stay clear of ecological red lines and permanent farmland, the local authorities said.

Contact the writers at guoyanqi@chinadaily.com.cn