Poor counties derive wide range of benefits from paired assistance programs

Gulzulnur Turson said that due to poor transportation links, she had to study at a boarding school in the county seat of Qira.

"At that time, I only went home once every two weeks, usually by a car arranged by the school," she said, adding that she was later admitted to a college in Urumqi, the regional capital, and now helps out at home.

She is preparing for a local civil servants' exam because she wants to stay near her parents. Meanwhile, sitting on an embroidered couch in his 80-square-meter home, Rozmemet Abdula, 50, played the dutar, a two-stringed instrument popular among Uygur herders.

He and his wife, who have no children, lease three greenhouses to plant chiles and grapes. He said that in addition to the lucrative agricultural work, the tap water in the village is a great convenience.

"The water is as clear as bottled water," he said, his words translated by an interpreter.

In the pasture where the couple used to live, there was no tap water, and the water they used to drink was a muddy color.

Paired assistance programs such as the one in Jinnan New Village are well-documented by multimedia illustrations at a nearby exhibition hall that was built with help from the Tianjin authorities to thank those who contributed to reinforcing unity in Qira. They include a Uygur farmer who adopted a baby from the Han ethnic group who he found abandoned at a local hospital in 2000. He raised the boy and sent him to college. Also featured is an ethnic Han businessman, whose date-growing operation in the Gobi Desert created jobs for hundreds of locals and helped turn large tracts of sand dunes into an oasis.

Memetreyim Memetmin, Party chief of a village that is famous for growing pomegranates, has also earned a place in the hall.

He served as a deputy to the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, from 2013 to 2018, and was received by President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the annual meeting of national lawmakers in 2017.

While showing visitors around the pomegranate orchards, which are located close to a pomegranate winery built with help from Tianjin, Memetreyim Memetmin said that in 2017 the commercial crop was the theme of a report he made to the president.

"In reply, he told me that people of all ethnic groups should stick together, just like pomegranate seeds," he said.