Cultivating a culture

Outside instructor helps transform impoverished remote village

Li Yicheng, 39, works for the culture and tourism department of Liuzhou in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. In August 2017, he applied to go to Yaogao village in Rongshui Miao autonomous county and work as a member of its poverty alleviation team.

Today, the Yaogao villagers acknowledge him as their instructor.

Close to the border with Guizhou province, the village is remote and lacks arable land. When Li and his colleagues first arrived in Yaogao, 510 people from 135 families lived in poverty. Only three of the 19 settlements in the village were connected by paved roads.

Li and his colleagues began to help the villagers by encouraging them to build infrastructure, cultivate cash crops and develop tourism.

On his first day in Yaogao, he started carrying a Miao-style cloth backpack. Li worked and ate with the locals and gradually won their trust.

The efforts of Li and his colleagues over the past three years to lift the villagers out of poverty have paid off. Cultivation of ganoderma mushroom and black fungus has become a major business for villagers, while 18 of the 19 settlements now have paved roads. A paved road to the final settlement is being built.

Last year, the village formally shook off poverty. Now, Li and his colleagues are planning to develop rural tourism featuring the Miao culture.