Oh, for that yearning for the pastoral past

Women dance in Shigezhuang village, Pingfang township, Chaoyang district, in Beijing on August 9, 2014. [Photo/IC]

The courtyard house you live in is better than a Western-style house, because it gifts you the boon of nostalgia, President Xi Jinping told an ethnic Bai family that hosted him on his visit to Dali in Yunnan province on Jan 20.

This is not the first time Xi has spoken about nostalgia. Two years ago, he said the government should bear in mind people's nostalgia when planning construction projects in villages.

But not all families are as lucky as the Bai family, which lives in one of the most well preserved tourist destinations famous for its natural environment and old buildings.

About 300 villages have disappeared each day on average in the past decade because of the country's urbanization drive and the government's plan to build "modern villages" that usually are meant to house residents from dozens of traditional villages, a study by the Beijing-based State Council Development Research Center shows.

Even many urban Chinese residents cannot return to what they call "home" because too many old blocks have been torn down to make way for new buildings that the "original dwellers" cannot afford to pay for. No wonder, homesickness has become a popular topic of discussion on social media during festivals.

Nobel Literature Prize winner Mo Yan has said his creative inspirations come from the memory of the 19 years he spent in the town of his birth in Gaomi county, Shandong province. Nostalgia does make powerful literature.