Helping from afar

Helping Dongxiang break loose of these shackles, are also people and organizations from both inside and outside China.

Seven years ago, Betty Lin was working for Este Lauder, a cosmetics firm that caters to the cosmopolitan crowd.

In the past seven years, the Singaporean has been living in Dongxiang, working for a UK-based charitable company called "I Care." First, Lin and "I Care" helped locals breed and raise sheep, the main source of meat. Later, Lin worked to grow better grade potatoes.

Potatoes provide one of the main sources of revenue for Dongxiang people, accounting for 63 per cent of the farmland and 27.2 per cent of rural revenue. (Other income comes from raising sheep, 31.1 per cent, and labour export, 24.8 per cent.)

"When I first came, people were eating bad potatoes that were diseased and degenerate. They could not use them as seeds any more," Lin said. "We wanted to ensure they had something to fill up their stomachs and also something with economic value so that they could sell it."

What Lin does daily is a tedious process of planting, cultivating and multiplying higher-quality potato seeds. She gives them to nearby farmers at cost.

She and her workers plant seeds imported from Scotland, first in greenhouses, where they grow tissue culture of their own. With the good seeds, she hopes farmers can eventually sell their potatoes to international buyers such as McDonald's.

The ongoing project will bring farmers an additional 7 yuan (88 US cents) per hectare, she calculated. With the diseased potatoes, one hectare could yield only about 14 kilograms, and now the same plot can have 10 times that output.

"The prefecture has asked us to help seven counties other than Dongxiang," said Lin, who witnessed during her stay a huge improvement in infrastructure spurred by government investment.

"We couldn't imagine so many could have access to water, road and electricity in such a short period of time," she said.

Lin and her team chose April to plant the seeds.

"We'll plant for farmers before we do our own. They often fear they would miss the best season," she said. "After planting, we can only pray for rain. If there's a drought, we'd have to water them from the pipeline, but the piped water is not available to every farmer right now."

When asked what drove her to leave an urban and modern life for endless days in dusty, landlocked Dongxiang, the vivacious 40-something replied: "I'm a Christian. I've been blessed in my life, and I want to help those who are less fortunate than I am."

Ma Fucai is the native son with a big heart.

In 1984, Ma left Dongxiang for Lanzhou, selling groceries at a farmers' market, trading sheepskins and doing other jobs. Later, he got into the mining business.

"I've made some money. I was also victimized a lot by swindlers because I didn't have much education," he explained with a heavy accent, walking with a clumsy, hobbling gait that betrays his leg deformity.

Ma, an ethnic Dongxiang, cannot forget the children who still live in his impoverished home county. He wants them to succeed more easily than he did.

So Ma donated 220,000 yuan (US$27,500) to Dongxiang schools. (He has also donated another 140,000 yuan (US$17,500) to water projects and road construction.)

Just before June 1, International Children's Day, he bought 50,000 yuan's (US$6,250) worth of supplies and gave them, together with 20,000 yuan (US$2,500) in cash, to the China Daily Hope School, which serves two neighbouring villages.

To help keep children from quitting school, he brought 350 sacks of flour. Each "poor" child received one, and the "extremely poor" received two sacks. He also paid for everyone's school bag, uniform and stationery.

Each girl got an additional 50 yuan (US$6.25) in cash.

"Girls are extremely vulnerable to poverty," he said.

"Whatever I've made, I cannot take it with me when I die, can I? What really matters is how much I can change the lives of my people back home."

(China Daily 06/20/2006 page1)