Liang, whose parents are primary school teachers in the village, has brought unprecedented publicity to Mililing, with local officials now giving the hamlet a long-overdue makeover. The modest, low-key village of Mililing in southern China has emerged as an unlikely tourist destination, thanks to the AI achievement of one of its own, Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek at 40.
Liang, whose parents are village primary school teachers, put Mililing in the spotlight, sending local authorities into a frenzy of renovation to give the hamlet its first major makeover, according to South China Morning Post.
The village itself is home to a population of some 700 people and survives on shoe-making and farming. Liang attended the primary school at Mililing before going on to the reputable Wuchuan No 1 Middle School. He then went on to perform better in the competitive gaokao exams and landed a position at the prestigious Zhejiang University in 2002.
Word of Liang’s success spread and a wave of curiosity swept over Milling, turning the village into an unlikely tourist spot. Since January, the village has witnessed a constant influx of tourists, ranging from families to company staff on organized tours, who flocked to see the AI child prodigy’s origins. This was at its peak during the Spring Festival holiday season, from January 29 to February 10, when Mililing received a whopping 10,000 tourists a day.
This unexpected tourist rush, though, highlighted the lack of infrastructure in the village. To respond to grievances and capitalize on the new fame, local officials embarked on a major overhaul. The roads were made wider, sewage drains were constructed, and the village was given a much-needed spruce-up. The facade of 29 homes was remade, crumbling buildings were knocked down, and the planting of trees was meant to improve the overall look of the village, the report said.
