What happened to Houtouwan a once bustling fishing village

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(7 Jun 2018) LEADIN: • An abandoned Chinese fishing village, once home to three-thousand people, is presenting visitors with a chance to explore a site now engulfed by nature. • The ghost town of Houtouwan is filled with homes ravaged by weather and overtaken by creeping vines and provides an insight into the scale of China's population shift towards city life. • STORYLINE: • Mist and an eerie quiet haunt the once-bustling fishing village of Houtouwan on an island off the east coast of China. • Blanketed with greenery, the ghost town is perched atop cliffs looking west into sea mists obscuring the horizon. • Abandoned homes covered in vines stand silent but for the surf, buzzing mosquitoes, and birds. • Once 3,000 people lived here in cliff-side homes now empty but for honeysuckle blossoms, weeds and 5 remaining residents. • They live in a city mostly abandoned in 2002, and with signs reading do not enter . • Zhu Mandi and her 27-year old son Wang Yi are returning to visit the family home and to see what happened to Houtouwan. • Wang Yi left the village at the age of five when his family relocated to access better services in the island's main town. • Memories of village festivals draw infectious laughter from his mother Zhu Mandi, who still dreams about her childhood among the mist-shrouded mountains next to the sea. • It reminded me the things from my childhood, when I was very young. After moving to the town Shengshan, every time I have a dream it is here. I dream of playing here, and it looks like what it did when we played here when I was young, she says. • Vines have since wound through the three-story house and ivy has crept through the now broken wooden front door. • The island draws tourists from the mainland intrigued by the village's unique devastation. Ivy cloaks some buildings completely but on many Houtouwan houses, beautiful roof tiles still gleam and broken verandas offer majestic views of the stormy sea. • Visitors to the village must take a boat to Shengshan then a taxi up a hill to a cemetery overlooking the village, and then descend down perilous footpaths. • The village isn't entirely abandoned. Five people still reside here with a relaxed pack of dogs that roam the empty homes. • Sun Ayue lives in a small home just off the main path through the old village. The 62-year old former fisherman remembers the village's boom times - and the bust. • China is the world's largest fishing nation. But poor enforcement of fishing regulations has led to a rapid decline in fish stocks. • China imposed seasonal moratoriums on fishing operations in the late 1990s to protect fish stocks from further depletion. • Yet Sun says most of the village's 600 residents ultimately left Houtouwan because it lacked proper roads and a school. • Transportation was inconvenient and, secondly, for kids' education, the teachers could not teach here. It was too far away, they arrived in the dark and left in the dark, that was a problem. There were two problems. • Houtouwan is a microcosm of the entire Chinese society, according to Zhao Yeqin, an associate sociology professor at the East China Normal University in Shanghai. The village reflects a broader migration trend that has seen countless Chinese move from rural areas to urban mega cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. • In Houtouwan's heyday, Lin Fazhen ran a small store in 1984 catering to fishermen. He sold cigarettes, alcohol, fishing supplies, canned food, biscuits and fruit that he imported on boats from the mainland. • They went to the sea when the boats were sailing, and they came back when it got windy. They played mahjong, Lin says. • • Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork • Twitter: / ap_archive • Facebook: / aparchives • Instagram: / apnews • • • You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...

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