 "The Icon for the smartphone apps DeepSeek is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing on January 28, 2025. AP")
The Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek has helped turn a tiny rural community in southern China into a lively tourist destination.
The reason behind this is Liang Wenfeng, the founder of the company.
Liang was born and raised in Milling village, and his modest upbringing has inspired others and drawn tourists from all over.
Wuchuan’s Mililing village has seen a surge in tourists, prompting local officials to invest in a makeover for the entire area.
What’s behind Milling village’s growing popularity?
Milling village is situated in Wuchuan, a tiny city in Guangdong province’s Zhanjiang prefecture.
Liang, 40, is from a family of academics; both of his parents teach at the Milling village elementary school, according to the South China Morning Post.
Liang went to Wuchuan No. 1 Middle School, a well-known establishment in the area, after finishing his elementary schooling in the village.
After achieving remarkable results in the fiercely competitive Gaokao University entrance exam, he was accepted to the esteemed Zhejiang University in 2002 as a result of his academic ability.
When his business, DeepSeek, debuted its state-of-the-art AI product in late January, competing with well-known American rivals, his incredible journey garnered international attention.
Many admirers of Liang’s accomplishments consequently came to see his beginnings in Milling village.
The village has drawn groups of tourists, including families and business workers, ever since it gained popularity as a tourist attraction.
From January 29 to February 10, the town was visited by about 10,000 tourists per day during the Spring Festival holiday.
Also read: DeepSeek to take on Google after disrupting OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Gemini?
How the popularity has transformed the village
Milling village, which has more than 700 residents, is a tight-knit community where younger generations typically work in nearby shoe factories, while older residents engage in agriculture, according to the village committee’s director.
Prior to the fame, the village lacked industrial development, with its sole source of income being the leasing of fish ponds for 10,000 yuan (US$1,400) per year.
The village’s infrastructure was initially ill-equipped to handle the high number of tourists.
Many visitors complained about the poor conditions, prompting a revamp project to commence in mid-February.
Although the funding source remains undisclosed, the renovations have brought significant improvements to the village.
The external walls of 29 houses have been refurbished, dilapidated buildings demolished, roads widened, sewage systems installed, and trees planted.
Some tourists have even taken “souvenirs” from the area.
“Some visitors took away a pile of soil, some stones or pieces of leaves,” said a resident identified only by his surname, Yuan, told the South China Morning Post.
The villagers have expressed their heartfelt gratitude to Liang, crediting him for bringing transformative changes to their lives. Inspired by his remarkable success, the residents have also established a fund to support high-achieving students.
But amid all of this, Liang Wenfeng’s grandfather has had to spend the majority of the day with his front door closed out of concern for being harassed by the constant stream of tourists that come to his four-story family home.
What do we know about DeepSeek
According to Fortune, DeepSeek was founded as an AI firm in May 2023. Its creator Liang Wenfeng, set it up in Hangzhou in southeastern China. He also set up a quantitative hedge fund known as High-Flyer in 2015.
Economic Times quoted Liang as saying he switched over to AI out of ‘scientific curiosity.’ “Basic science research rarely offers high returns on investment,” he added.
As per BBC, Liang is said to have launched DeepSeek by collecting 50,000 of Nvida A100 chips. The US has since banned these chips from being exported to China. DeepSeek is believed to have combined these chips with cheaper, lower-end sets.
As per Fortune, DeepSeek took the plunge into AI by putting out DeepSeek Coder in November 2023. It then followed up with its DeepSeek LLM and DeepSeek V-2 in May 2024. Its latest models R1 and V-3 have taken the world by storm.
The low cost of the AI model and its strong performance raised eyebrows in China and other countries, like the US.
This is because people were shocked about how little money DeepSeek seemingly spent on its AI models.
Its researchers have claimed that they spent under $6 million (Rs 51 crore) on the DeepSeek V-3 launched on January 10.
That’s a fraction of what tech companies such as Apple and Microsoft spend on their AI models.
Its creators also say DeepSeek’s AI Assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model “tops the leaderboard among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally."
Basically, the creators claim that DeepSeek’s performance compares favourably with AI models from giants like OpenAI when it comes to maths, coding and natural language reasoning.
With inputs from agencies