JINAN -- To tell every big change in his village over the past 40 years, Wu Wenkui just needs to open a set of yellowed ledgers he had handwritten over the years.

Wu, now 72 and Party chief of Xiaowujiamatou village in East China's Shandong province, has maintained the habit of writing down big changes that take place in the village in the ledger over the past four decades.

The ledgers take up more than half a shelf in the village's Party committee office, with the latest record being the subsidies given to 14 households that were just lifted out of poverty.

Wu became the village Party chief in 1977 when he was 31. One year later, China began its reform and opening up. His ledgers tell the changes that have taken place in China's rural areas.

"Three towels, one mask cost 2.5 yuan (about $0.4), a broom 1.38 yuan, a packet of cigarettes 0.38 yuan..." reads one note Wu wrote in the ledger in 1978.

"Every purchase and earning of collective assets must be written down," he said.

A loan of 454.5 yuan for irrigation by electric pumping was also recorded in another ledger of that year. "At that time, water conservancy facilities were poor, so we had to irrigate our farmland using water from a neighboring village," he said.

"But now we no longer worry about that problem as water conservancy facilities are getting better and better," he said. "Irrigation canals and ditches have been built in the farmland."

Back in the early 1980s, under the household contract responsibility system, farmers could be allocated land by contract, but each household should return a fixed amount of grain to the government.

As recorded in the ledger for 1998, the village was required to give back about 43,500 kg of wheat that year.

However, a drought hit the village and wheat output reduced by 40 percent. The village Party committee held an emergency meeting and decided to plant corn with a relatively shorter growth cycle so they could return the required amount of grain on time.

Another item often recorded in the ledgers was the different types of rural taxes and fees, which were a heavy burden for farmers.

In 1998, the village had to pay taxes of more than 43,000 yuan on production, education, water, and road construction, and another 10,000 yuan of agricultural special duties.

However, the situation began to change when a rural tax reform was piloted in Anhui Province in 2000 to reduce the burden on farmers. In 2006, the Chinese government announced the abolishment of various kinds of agricultural taxes and fees, ending a 2,600-year-old agricultural tax.

Items about returning grain and paying taxes began to disappear from the ledgers after 2000. Instead, more and more subsidies such as a wheat seed subsidy, cotton plantation subsidy, and pensions for those over 60 years old have become new items.

"Villagers were unhappy to see me collecting grain and taxes, and I would have to run back and forth and try to persuade them", said Wu Yuanshan, who has been an accountant in the village for 20 years. "But now, there are more and more projects with financial support from the government, and everyone is happy when they receive subsidies."

According to Wu Wenkui, with the government's financial support, the village has built three solar power stations, creating an income of over 10,000 yuan each year since 2016.

"Villagers who have lost their ability to work due to illness or old age will be allocated an amount of money earned from the stations, enough to meet their basic living needs," he said.

Loans of several hundred to several thousand yuan from the rural credit cooperative are also kept in old ledgers, but they are not found in new ones.

Thanks to policies from the central government to help revitalize the rural economy in recent years, houses along the provincial highway have been rented for business use, creating more income for the village. The village built a nursing home for its elderly and those who have lost the ability to work using 700,000 yuan earned by the village itself.

"To transfer about 13 hectares of land, build a new road, green the village..." These are some of the targets that Wu Wenkui has written in the ledger for this year.

As the central authorities released the first policy statement of the year, the rural revitalization strategy was frequently mentioned in the new ledger.

"We will have more and more ledgers as well as more money and opportunities for rural development," he said.