Over the past four years, the center has sent more than 300 teams, with more than 4,000 teachers and students from nearly 200 colleges and universities, to rural areas to contribute to the rural revitalization efforts. A total of 25,000 square meters of derelict houses have been renovated with the investment of nearly 200 million yuan from the local governments and enterprises.
Likewise, twelve common facilities developed as part of the rural revitalization plan have served more than 100,000 villagers, cultivated more than 5,000 volunteers, and trained more than 40,000 rural cadres and villagers.
During their visit to Dongzhongdu Village, the university students, facilitated by the Jining Rural Revitalization Center, helped local enterprises improve their products’ branding.
For instance, they proposed a branding slogan "A Bite of Crispy Meat" for Jining Hongrun Food Group’s crisp meat products to appeal to more young consumers. Likewise, they designed new product packaging and created a novel brand narrative for crisp meat that matches the aesthetic taste of young people. A series of product designs combined the historical allusion of Su Daji and the crispy character of the product through a pair of Chinese homophones, integrating traditional culture with the selling point. In addition, they devised coffee packaging for a local cafe.
On the packaging, the ukiyoe-style landscape painting gently sketched out mountains and lakes depicted a harmonious scene of coexistence between man and nature, and injected the spirit of leisurely life into coffee products.
Besides, the students investigated the current situation of the Nishan Luming Pastoral Complex during their 3-day field investigation, keeping in mind the river system, public transportation, village settlement, cultural landscape, and other aspects around that complex.
Following their study, they completed overall planning of the complex centered on regimen residence. In their plan, they marked off three residential clusters—Luming Commercial Zone, Agriculture Experience Zone, and Forest Regimen Zone.
They also included recreation buildings at the nodes of the public space in their planning. Meanwhile, in cooperation with the local Sishui Micro Public Welfare Association, the students put forward the conceptual plan for the interior space renovation of Luci Children's Home, and designed four aesthetic education spaces with different themes for left-behind children: ascend step by step, study the nature of things, Mondrian and square box space.
The Jining Center is committed to serving as a platform for young talents to contribute to rural revitalization. Furthermore, it is devoted to linking universities, local governments and corporations, synergizing talents from various majors and maintaining normalized operations. Shen Zhen, manager of the Jining Rural Revitalization Center of Tsinghua University, said: “Rural revitalization is a cause that requires college students to contribute their creativity.”
