China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Rain brings sunshine to village in Southwest China
Zuo Wenxue, the Party chief of Tangyue village, will attend the National People’s Congress in March to share the village’s progress in development with other delegates at the annual meeting in Beijing.
Once an underdeveloped place in Guizhou province, Tangyue has become a model of rural reform in Southwest China.
Tangyue, which is under the administration of Anshun city, used to be home to elderly and children as most of the working-age people had migrated to the coastal cities for jobs.
But in 2014, a rainstorm changed things there.
“The village was severely damaged by floodwater, and more than 1,000 people who had left to work elsewhere rushed back to rebuild their houses,” recalls Zuo.
“That gave us the opportunity to unite the villagers to find a way to get rid of poverty.”
Zuo proposed taking advantage of the central government’s land-use reforms to turn the village’s resources into assets.
The residents became shareholders by setting up a You Chengying, cooperative for agricultural products and using the land that had been left unattended.
Before the flood, more than 30 percent of the village land was unused as most people were working outside.
The cooperative has since converted about 250 hectares of land to agricultural use.
You Chengying, a resident of Tangyue, transferred 1.2 hectares of land to the Golden Land Cooperative owned by the village at the end of 2015. She received about 11,510 yuan ($1,816) as a shareholder last year, she says.
Agricultural production has helped the development of related industries. A cold storage facility and a transport team were set up for sorting and packing vegetables and selling them in markets outside the village.
“More jobs are available now and many villagers who worked in cities are returning to the village. My son and even my elderly mother have found jobs,” You says, adding that her family of four now has an annual income of 100,000 yuan.
Data shows that with the help of reform, the average annual income of villagers increased from less than 4,000 yuan in 2013 to 14,685 yuan in 2017.
The rapid increase in income is not the only change in the village.
A series of activities, including free health checks and distributing Spring Festival couplets, were held at the Tangyue Cultural Square ahead of Chinese New Year this year.
Huang Guoyuan, a teacher of Honghu Senior School near the village, came to write couplets for the residents along with nine other calligraphy amateurs. He says every year the Anshun Calligrapher Association sends its members to different villages in the area during Spring Festival.
He says he is surprised to see many young people returning to the village these days.
“I wrote 50 couplets for the villagers in two hours,” Huang says.
As to the future development, the village officials are aiming even higher.
“By 2020, Tangyue’s agricultural output value will increase from 5 million yuan to 20 million yuan and the per capita net income of the villagers will reach 20,000 yuan,” Zuo says.
Agricultural development will also get a new look as the villagers plan to set up a system using automatic intelligence for watering and fertilization through big data, says Tang Congfu, the head of the Golden Land Cooperative.
“We are also building an e-commerce platform to increase sales channels for our agricultural products,” Zuo says.
More jobs are available now and many villagers who worked in cities are returning to the village.”
Zhao Yandi the story. contributed to
Tangyue village resident of