China / Society

Villages see success in their efforts to improve lives

By Su Jiangyuan in Huishui, Guizhou (China Daily) Updated: 2012-10-18 07:21

I started my journey at dawn on Tuesday, and my destination was the house of Wang Enguang, a farmer in a village of Huishui county.

To my surprise, the family of six people lives in a wooden house of only 30 square meters. It has only a TV set, an electronic cooker and a stove. Even with the newly harvested corn, their total assets were less than 1,000 yuan ($160).

They eat very simple food at their three meals every day, and the expense for each person was 4.2 yuan a day, with which you can afford to buy only a bowl of rice noodle in big cities.

Although the family lives under the poverty line of 6.3 yuan per day, Wang told the reporter that the family was satisfied because at least they were not starved.

Living in the poor and remote village, they know little about the outside world, and it was a little bit hard to communicate with them.

The economy in the area lagged behind other places. In Haohonghua village and its nearby villages, there are no enterprises or factories, and farming is on a small scale. The farmland is limited so it is hard for villagers to make a living by farming.

Many young people choose to leave the village and go to cities to seek a job.

But I also found an interesting trend in the nearby region of Haohonghua village, where five villages begin to plant commercial plants such as chayote, which can bring 10 times the income of traditional plants such as rice and corn.

More importantly, it has cooperatives and the output was on a large scale. I learned that by targeting special market, many villagers gradually get out of poverty.

In Guizhou, there are many other successful cases of poverty reduction. But with a population of 15.21 million poor people, the poverty issue is not an easy task.

In Wang Enguang's village, the local government is still making efforts to reduce poverty.

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