Benefiting from environmental protection, Yucun village in East China's Zhejiang province has found a secret of sustainable prosperity.

About 15 years ago, it was hard to imagine that the village could now have a beautiful country road with flowers lining either side, a national tourist attraction and hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting from across China each year.

The village achieved rapid development by running a cement factory and mining industries at that time but meanwhile suffered from severe air and water pollution.

"We hesitated on whether or not to shut down the factory," said Jiang Zhihua, a villager who worked at the factory. "Although it brought income to almost every household in the village, we all lived in a hostile environment where dust hovered in the air and some villagers even had pneumoconiosis."