From hardships to happiness: Liangshan villagers shake off poverty

Muendi community in Zhaojue county, Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, China's Sichuan province, on Aug. 22, 2020. [Photo/Beijing Review]

By early September last year, 353,200 people from 74,400 households in Liangshan prefecture had been relocated and begun embracing their new lives in their new homes.

New jobs

People did not sit back and relax after moving in. "A good house looks good on the surface, but a sound industry is what really makes lives better," said some in the new community. However, for hundreds of years, people in the villages planted low-value crops for a living, earning a meager income of a few thousand yuan a year.

Local commerce authority in Butuo county, one of the impoverished counties in the Daliang Mountains area, found that the climate here was perfect for growing blueberries. Seeing a short supply in the market, the authority set up a blueberry plantation base in cooperation with a leading agricultural company.

The agricultural company designated technicians to instruct the locals on how to plant and take care of blueberries, and promised a yield of at least 1,000 kilograms per mu (1 mu=0.067 hectare) and a minimum purchasing price of 10 yuan per kilogram after harvest.

The 70-year-old Ciqu Laza works at the base. Despite her advanced age, Ciqu Laza said she is in good health and cherishes the opportunity to work, hoping to earn more to support her family. She now enjoys the subsistence allowance from the government and earns more than 2,000 yuan a month.

Besides farming, the locals can also make money through other means like land transfer. Ciqu Laza's family has transferred more than 18 mu of its land to the base, earning 600 yuan per mu per year. She said the income is a lot higher than merely planting potatoes.