Taiwan helps village become popular spot for wedding photos

As part of the country's efforts to promote rural revitalization, Fujian rolled out preferential policies in 2018 to attract Taiwan designers to join village-building work in the province after a similar strategy was pursued on the island.

The incentives include giving subsidies of up to 500,000 yuan ($77,450) each to villages that hire Taiwan designers. By the end of last year, about 200 designers from Taiwan were involved in rural revitalization work in 117 villages in Fujian, according to the Fujian Provincial Housing and Urban-Rural Development Department.

In March, a Taiwan team arrived in Sanlou. After conducting investigations and holding discussions with local people, they decided to build the village into a wedding photography base because of its scenery.

Many wedding photography bases in Taiwan on remote mountains have become popular tourist attractions. One example is Pasture Yen Family in Changhua, Taiwan, which used to be an abandoned pig farm. Its large parkland area and barn-style auditorium are also used for weddings and banquets.

Design team leader Hsu Chun-hsiung said: "The experience of the pig farm transformation project in Taiwan can be used in Sanlou, where there are large areas of grassland and unique terraced fields. Surveys found that outdoor weddings in forests are growing popular on the mainland.

"The village has good natural resources, and some contain symbols of romance — for example, two camphor trees in the village accompanying each other."