Relocation gives families a fresh start

Move to urban communities improves lives of rural residents. ZHAO XINYING reports from Xi'an.

Sitting in a factory workshop near the center of Laoxian, Ankang city, in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, Zhang Yundi used a sewing machine to turn fragments of cloth into a toy bear.

Across the way stood a well-planned, well-constructed residential community featuring rows of six-story modern apartment buildings with clean white walls and black roof tiles. That's where Zhang's new home is located.

Working in the factory as a toymaker, Zhang can earn 2,000 yuan ($290) a month.

Her children attend a school just a few minutes' walk from home and her husband works at another factory nearby, earning 3,000 yuan a month.

The 40-year-old's life is anything but poverty-stricken, but before she and her family moved to the community three years ago, things were very different.

At the time, Zhang, her husband and their three children lived in Wanfushan, a village in a mountainous part of Laoxian, where there was no tap water, electricity or sealed roads to connect residents with the outside world.

Drinking water had to be carried uphill in buckets to their home, a poorly constructed mud-and-brick building. The 70 kilometer trip to the downtown took hours along dirt roads.

Zhang's family led an extremely hard life. The household's combined annual income amounted to just a few thousand yuan, and relied on Zhang doing farm work in the village while her husband was a migrant worker on construction sites in large towns.

"Once, my eldest daughter fell ill and was very weak. My husband was away from home and couldn't be reached because neither I nor anyone in the village had a landline or a cellphone. I didn't even have 10 yuan in my pocket to pay for her treatment," Zhang said, trying to hold back her tears as she recalled those difficult days. "I felt so hopeless."