Karen Wang

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Community Setting: Rural
Location: Xuling Village, Qiantan Town, Jiande City, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
Contact Email Address: ssgu2018@qq.com
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Sunshine Ecovillage is an organization promotes the ecovillage movement in China. It is a partner of GEN and the UNESCO National Working Committee on ESD. It is located at Xuling Village in a valley near Hangzhou with terrace, mineral water and fresh air. It lives in a lifestyle searching the relations between man & Society & Nature. It tries to promote the transformation of eco-civ by education.
Sunshine Ecovillage is the first one who brought GEN & EDE to China and has hold 6 EDEs in 5 years. After thousands of people have received training, hundreds of ecovillages are in the process. We have co-founded SEN Eco Academy with Prof. Cobb, an academician of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The mission is to train ecovillage designers and eco-person, to call students from global to live & study in rural area of China for 1+ year.
We explore a new lifestyle, a new way of education, a community formed by young Chinese people. For thousands of years, China’s rural culture has not been interrupted; the ideas of Taoism and environmental friendliness in Chinese traditional culture have been passed down in the countryside. We believe the ecovillage movement will not only optimize the balanced development of China’s urban & rural areas, but more importantly, with acting locally and thinking globally, we will explore a path connected with traditional culture for the inspiration for global sustainable development.
We are living in this 1000+ years old village (Xuling) which takes 2 hours driving from Hangzhou City. It is 430 meters above sea level and are naturally pollution-free. The forest coverage rate is 95%. Surrounded by hundred-story terraces and ancient road extending straight from the foot to the ridge. In spring, the terrace is fully covered by yellow canola flowers. The clouds are always dazzling. You can see 200 years Camphor tree, pear and peach blossoms, with barking of dogs. The mountain is full of birds and flowers throughout the year, full of fruity aromas, plums, sweet apricots, berries, coriander, pomegranate, chestnut, pecan, persimmon and citron. People are following 4 seasons changing and accept the gift of nature. Some villagers are still living in rammed earth houses for decades, breath fresh air, drink natural mountain mineral water, with good energy and strong spiritual vibrating, we live healthily and get healed here.