Clockwise from top left: A worker oversees the process of gold extraction from ore. Cranes and half-finished buildings soar in the skyline of Zhaoyuan. Some mine shafts now plummet to more than 1,700 meters below the ground. Zhaoyuan city has led the country's gold output for 35 years. Zhao Gang / For China Daily

Jiangjia village is a model of prosperity, but residents realize there will be a day when the mines that made them rich are spent.

There was once an idyllic place called Peach Blossom Valley, according to legend, where everyone was happy, well educated and prosperous. Shandong province's Jiangjia village is a very real modern-day Peach Blossom Valley, owing to the rich gold reserves it sits on. A road sign announcing "No 1 Gold Village in China" greets visitors to Jiangjia, which is about 40 km from the Bohai Sea and a mountainous 40-minute drive from Zhaoyuan city. Residents own the village's gold mining company, Chunyu Corporation Ltd. In 2010, its income was 1.7 billion yuan ($262.8 million). The 300-hectare village has a population of just 300 people, after 500 former residents moved to Zhaoyuan in 2006, when Jiangjia government launched a relocation project to improve residents' living conditions.

Lin Cuiqin, 43, married a Jiangjia villager in 1999 and moved into their new city home in 2006.

Like everyone else, they were offered a fully furnished apartment of 140 square meters in Zhaoyuan. They paid just 50,000 yuan ($7,730).

Lin now works as a gardener in her community; and her husband drives to work at Jiangjia village's mine.

Village authorities say about 90 percent of adult villagers work in the mine.

Lin and her husband earn nearly 5,000 yuan a month. They have two daughters, one of whom studies in the village's elementary school, while her elder sister studies in Japan, which costs 80,000 yuan a year.

"We cannot afford these fees on our monthly income," Lin says. "But the village gives each of us 15,000 yuan as a bonus at the end of the year, which is a big help."

Jiangjia was not always so idyllic. For a long time, no one knew it was sitting on a goldmine.

Wang Shuxiang, 65, Lin's mother-in-law, was born in the village and says that in the 1960s, a 0.13-hectare corn field was the major source of income for her family of four. When people living in rural areas were allowed to work in towns in the late 1970s, many locals left.

"Everyone wanted to leave and look for jobs. Just seven or eight people stayed in my neighborhood," Wang recalls.