Rural buildings renovated by Librairie Avant-Garde: one bookshop in Daijiashan village, Tonglu county, Zhejiang province [Photo by Yao Li/Provided to China Daily]

Hostels have been built and, as a result, property prices in the villages have soared. For instance, the annual rent of a house in Daijiashan village was 2,000 yuan ($306) in 2015, but has now grown to 8,000 yuan.

Similarly, Chenjiapu village used to be a dying enclave despite a history stretching back 600 years. The bookstore, however, means that holidays bring so many visitors that there are often traffic jams on the road leading to the village.

"I never thought that a small bookstore could change the fate of a village," he says.

When Qian Xiaohua, founder of Librairie Avant-Garde headquartered in Nanjing, started opening bookstores in the countryside six years ago, he encountered a lot of doubts and questions. After all, bookstores in cities, with much bigger populations, could barely survive due to online competition.