Local voices bring Xihaigu stories to life

Nestled in the foothills of the Helan Mountains, the "See Minning" Theater Village in Minning town, Yongning county, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, offers an immersive theatrical experience. Scripts here draw inspiration from the Xihaigu settlement — a decades-long resettlement program that moved over 1 million people from arid mountains to the fertile plains near the Yellow River.

Launched on July 1, the village comprises a full-scale replica of an old Xihaigu settlement — cave dwellings, rammed-earth houses, dry wells — and features 36 plays, with nearly 10 hours of rotating performances every day. Visitors can purchase an all-in-one pass, receive a "migrant handbook" and journey through indoor productions, street-corner reenactments and interactive folk performances.

Feng Xinxin, brand director of the drama village at See Minning Culture and Tourism Development Co, says that the creative team traveled deep into the villages of Xihaigu and turned oral histories and everyday objects into theater.

"Real stories are our core strength," Feng says.

It adopts a model it calls "actors are villagers, performing is living". Recruitment is open to all, with no prior experience required. "We prioritize those who speak local dialects or have folk talents — migrants who carry the memories of the old days. They just need to forget technique and rely on memory," Feng says.

Liu Yanqin, 54, a former Xihaigu resident and now an actress in the village, says the most moving scenes for her are those that re-create the search for water.

"In Xihaigu, we used to walk miles just to fetch a bucket of muddy water. When I perform the scene where the family cries out for water — it is like reliving my first 30 years," Liu adds.

Later, her family moved to Minning town. "The moment I turned on the tap and clean water flowed out, I wept. That was the biggest change, and the children could go to school just nearby."

In 2005, her family started growing mushrooms and began earning real money. "That was the year I felt life had finally become good," she says.

For visitors, the experience is quite personal. Wang Hui, a tourist from Gansu province who visited with her family, said she has seen many cultural performances elsewhere, but nothing compares to this.

"The Xihaigu way of life is so similar to our own rural childhoods. The cave dwellings, the dry wells — they feel so familiar. You are walking into that era, that land," she says.

Beyond the theaters, the village has integrated a food bazaar featuring snacks from Ningxia and Fujian province, a wine-tasting area and intangible cultural heritage workshops for clay sculptures and brick carving. More than 80 nearby restaurants and hotels have upgraded their facilities, adding 1,000 beds, and a dedicated bus route now connects the site to Yinchuan in Ningxia.

According to the county's bureau of culture, tourism, and sports, in the two months since it opened, the attraction has received more than 1,000 visitors per day on average, with total revenue exceeding 10 million yuan ($1.4 million).

"The local villagers have shifted from being recipients of aid to narrators of their own cultural stories. They have become storytellers of the Fujian-Ningxia partnership history and active participants in live-action performances," says Ma Peiyao, the bureau's director.

Ma adds that it has transformed the phased achievements of paired assistance into a sustainably operated cultural brand and cultural tourism industry model, leveraging the tourism sector to drive local economic growth and generate increased income for the community.

"Through artistic expression, the endeavor interprets the contemporary essence of the 'partnership sentiment', transforming the collaborative struggle into a publicly accessible collective memory that resonates emotionally with younger generations who did not personally experience that era," says Ma.

To date, the project has created direct and indirect employment for 2,500 local residents, from actors and artisans to shopkeepers and service staff members.

"For the villagers, it is steady work close to home. For us, it is stable and cost-effective — a sustainable virtuous cycle," Feng says.

According to Feng, projected annual visitor numbers are eventually expected to exceed 1 million, with total consumption surpassing 1 billion yuan.

But Feng says growth is not the sole aim. "We are not a fast-food attraction. We are serving the land itself."

As Liu puts it: "I hope the younger generation sees that hardship was real. But more than that, I hope they see that people can change their destiny with their own hands. Good days are not given — they are built, generation by generation."