Experimental folk

For villager Chen Meng, the first profound encounter between Caijiapo and the arts was in 2018, when the village held the first Mangba festival.

At that time, artists placed tall flagpoles in the wheat fields, on top of which were huge portraits of the owners of the fields. "It symbolized the relationship between the people and the land, while also paying tribute to the vast number of Chinese farmers," says Chen.

According to Cui Kaimin, a teacher from the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, the first festival was the result of a social research project conducted in 2018 by teachers and students from the academy's Experimental Arts Department. During the research, they discovered that the village was picturesque, but had been "hollowed out" by migration. Many people of working age had left in search of work, leaving behind mostly elderly people and children.

"When the young students arrived in the village, many elderly people invited them to their homes for dinner, hoping to chat with them and encounter something new," Cui recalls.

In conversations with the villagers, the students and teachers spotted a folk custom called the "Mangba meeting", meaning "gathering in the fallow season" in the local dialect. Traditionally, after the annual wheat harvest, farmers on the Guanzhong Plain enjoy a period of leisure, visiting relatives and friends to share steamed buns and fruit, together with stories of their farming experiences.

"Experimental art advocates having a relationship with society and participating in livelihood practices. We decided to use the Mangba meeting to conduct an art experiment in Caijiapo," says Cui.

During the festival's first edition, various activities were held in the wheat fields, including short sketches by the villagers and avant-garde dramas. The teachers and students also crafted artworks from wheat straw and tree branches, turning the village and its fields into art spaces. The event struck a positive chord.

In 2019, local cadres asked the artists a question: "Can this festival be repeated?"

They had every reason to want it to continue, as the first edition had attracted a large number of tourists, providing a new market for the village's agricultural products.

Based on this early success, the village, with a population of nearly 4,000, began a process of systematically transforming itself into a venue for the arts, developing the range of creative events on offer, along with services and facilities for visitors.

Over the years, each edition of the festival has become more diverse, while the facilities and infrastructure have been greatly improved, thanks to the concerted efforts of local authorities and the academy. The facilities now include artistic souvenir shops, homestays, cafes and restaurants, all of which bring in revenue.

Qin Weidong, Party chief of Caijiapo village, says that more than 200 villagers now work in the tourism sector, and its total annual revenue has exceeded 14 million yuan ($1.96 million). During this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday, which lasted from June 22 to 24, Caijiapo received more than 50,000 tourist visits.