"Such agricultural or agritainment programs in villages, especially those with scenic views and unique folklore, are attracting an increasing number of tourists who seek to catch a break from busy urban lives, and are very helpful to increase incomes and improve the quality of life for locals.

"Take the agricultural or agritainment programs as an example.

There is also a need for regulations on charging and services for homestays, tourism and other agritainment programs.

A new model was formed, giving the village responsibility for planning, while enterprises were responsible for specific operations, and the villagers transformed their self-built houses into homestays and agritainment.

From surviving to thriving, "agritainment" has traveled a long road already, said Lu Xianrong, 47, a resident of Changshui village in Wuning county of Jiangxi province.

Unsurprisingly, he is upbeat about the future of agritainment in China.

Three years back, Lu leveraged local geographical and environmental advantages to expand his family's agritainment business, like most of his fellow villagers.

"Lu started expanding his family's agritainment business in 2018, after he let go of a job opportunity that came his way by dint of his being a former soldier.

"Their agritainment business launched in April.

The boom in agritainment also helped local villagers to shake off poverty.

"Tourists' appetites for history and revolutionary stories have increased significantly," said local farmer Li Yungang, who jumped on the red tourism bandwagon in 2006 and runs an agritainment business in Huangyadong.

There were crowds of visitors to agritainment businesses on a daily basis.

I re-built our house in 2017, bought a car in 2019, and started side businesses of managing agritainment businesses as the growing crayfish industry in the (Pengze) county is attracting food lovers from nearby cities," Fu said.

At present, the number of agritainment farmyards has reached 2,600, with 61,000 beds, recording the highest number of its kind among the Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei region.

With a river providing drinking water, and with neat houses lining its tidy streets, nearly every household in the village is connected in some way to the agritainment business, or farm-based entertainment.