Great travel gets better

Puzhehei has become a popular destination after such Chinese TV series as Eternal Love were filmed there. [PHOTO BY YANG ZHENG/XU JIAN/FOR CHINA DAILY]

Village head Fan Chengyuan recalls the village's guestroom prices ranged from 50 to 80 yuan in 2012.

It's now 400 to 1,000 yuan.

Villagers initially built guesthouses in different styles that clashed.

Fan realized in 2012 that visitors didn't like the cheap rooms and that the accommodation options should change.

Village officials visited rural destinations across China to learn from their successes. They soon devised an improvement plan.

They held a meeting to explain the plan to locals and showed blueprints designed to make it easy for them to understand.

The government offered compensation and preferential loans.

Villagers join the program of their own free will and rebuilt guesthouses in accordance with the blueprints, to ensure the architecture's style is in line with conventions of the Yi ethnic group.

Most old buildings were dismantled and reconstructed on the same sites.

Fan says he was the first to undergo the experiment.

He lost about 2 million yuan initially.

His mother cried when their three-floor guesthouse was pulled down, he says.

But he promised that it'd bring a better future.