Surmounting harsh lot for move to progress

Village on arid slopes leverages support measures, self-reliance efforts to record rapid development

Editor's note: With China set to meet its goal this year of eliminating extreme poverty before next year's 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, this series looks at the efforts of different areas of the country to erase poverty and improve livelihoods.

Villager Ma Maizhi, 52, climbs out of a manhole, up to his knees in mud but smiling broadly as he announces that the pipes have been cleared.

Ma is working right outside his old home, an adobe hut built on the slopes of Bulenggou village in Dongxiang autonomous county of the Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture, Northwest China's Gansu province.

Like the grand concrete compound of the cultural center set to showcase ethnic Dongxiang traditions and customs right next to his previous premises, Ma has since moved to a new nine-room house, complete with electricity, running water and other modern conveniences.

The infrastructure improvements reflect the profound changes felt in villagers' lives as part of major poverty alleviation measures nationwide, with stakeholders and beneficiaries like Ma working hand-in-hand to close the development gap in record time.

"The pipes, roads, buildings … we never had all these just a few years ago," Ma said.

Other than his waterworks duties, Ma also helps with village sanitation and construction, which, together with government grants and other support, add to his eight-person household income of up to 80,000 yuan ($11,800) a year.

It is a stark difference from less than a decade ago, when they had to subsist on the potatoes, wheat and other crops they grew on their 0.74-hectare farmland.

Down the slope at a cookie production plant, his wife Ma Mai Re Ze, 44, cuts traditional Dongxiang "Hua Guo Guo "dough into creative knots and shapes before they are fried in rapeseed oil.

Ma, who has been working at the plant for two years after receiving skills training under local government support, earns up to 3,000 yuan a month, making her an equal contributor to the family income.

In the past, before she found work at the plant, women's status in the village was not as high as men, but new jobs and wages like hers have helped to change that mindset, Ma said.

"We can all help to improve our lives together, thanks to these changes in such a short time," she said.