Grassroots actions for rural revitalization: documenting a Miao family’s efforts toward autonomous and sustainable futures through biocultural design

Abstract

This study documented the efforts of a Miao (Hmong) family in Guizhou, China, to create autonomous and sustainable rural futures by developing diverse economic pathways rooted in local biocultural resources. Amidst the rapid sociocultural and economic changes in rural China over recent decades, this family from Queniao — a remote Miao village in the core of Leigong Mountain Nature Reserve — has undertaken a series of agritourism and conservation projects under the business entity Manyou Farm (慢友农场) since 2019, focusing on local agricultural and food practices, rural experiential activities, ecological tea, Miao heritage crafts, education, and advocacy. Using a case study approach complemented by ethnographic methods, this study explored the emergence, organization, and impact of these agritourism and conservation projects and the embedded meanings, values, knowledge, and skills. It also identified the drivers and constraints of these projects. The concepts of autonomy, biocultural design, and sustainability transitions were engaged to interpret the family’s motivations, encapsulate Manyou Farm’s projects, and contextualize the success and significance of these efforts. The findings and implications fall into three dimensions. First, Manyou Farm’s projects offer the family significant security and well-being from local ways of life while maintaining integration with mainstream economic systems and cultural life. This highlights the inadequacy of hierarchical developmental discourses and the agency and strategism of communities in pursuing their own paths to desired futures. Second, Manyou Farm is identified as a sustainability-driven, autonomy-centered, and dynamically organized enterprise, whose distinctiveness has contributed to its positive, multidimensional impact, underscoring the benefits for rural developmental projects to support multi-actor, innovative processes. Third, Manyou Farm’s case highlights the role of state and regional developmental schemes in enabling grassroots tourism initiatives and the yearnings among urban residents for environmental and food quality, community connections, and cultural authenticity. Three emerging values, processes, and relations of sustainability — slow, urban-rural integration, and multifunctionality — are derived from this case study.