Wang Weixing recalls that in his childhood brown sugar was something people made at home, and the environment for making it was not particularly clean or hygienic, he says.

The new factory is laid out in such a way that visitors can get a taste of how brown sugar is made and experience the village's sugar culture. Once sugar cane is harvested in autumn, brown sugar production begins, a process that takes place in November to December, and this attracts many tourists keen on see how the product is made.

The transparent factory has a circular corridor that allows visitors to watch the entire sugar-making process, and this in effect puts the workers on stage. They wear clean orange uniforms and treat their work like a kind of performance, says Wang, 52, who is in charge of the factory.

"At first they were bashful, but now they have taken it in their stride and are confident in going about their duties as visitors from far and wide look on."

When sugar is not being made, the factory becomes a community center, a public space in which villagers can enjoy square dancing, a popular pastime in China, watch films, and hold meetings and exhibitions.

In a traditional rural village there has generally been no community center, and ancestral temples have acted as a kind of public space. However, as people embrace modern lifestyles, villages have increasingly needed such public space, Xu says. Thus most of the rural buildings she has designed have a communications function, she says.