When Qiu Liqin, a self-described lifelong farmer from Lujiacun in Anji county, Zhejiang province, stepped onto the glittering stage at UN headquarters in New York in September, she told her story with passion.

"It would have seemed natural for a farmer like me to have a trembling voice and a racing heartbeat in front of such a large audience, but surprisingly, I was not flustered at all," she said. "I was representing 40 million farmers in Zhejiang province."

Qiu came to the United States to receive the Champions of the Earth Award in the inspiration and action category, one of the United Nation's highest environmental honors. It recognized Zhejiang's Green Rural Revival Program this year.

The village of Lujiacun is a good example of the program, which was launched by President Xi Jinping when he was secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2003.

Qiu's story began by painting a picture of poverty in the village 15 years ago.

"There were no drainage systems at homes, and no trash bins. I had to carry buckets of sewage to rivers far away and dump them," she said. "The polluted waterways were black and odorous, and litter piled up on the roads."

The scene was common for a number of rural villages nestled in the hills and mountains of Zhejiang, where the economic boom in urban areas had left rural areas largely unattended.

In 2003, research led by the provincial rural affairs authority showed that only 4,000 villages in the province lived in good environmental conditions, while the remaining 30,000 were afflicted by pollution.