Huanggang, Hubei - "Last Spring Festival, we were all anxious about our future, but this year we felt everything was good."

Guo Jijun, 47, a householder in a six-member family with his wife, two sons, a daughter-in-law of the younger son and a 3-month-old granddaughter, carefully prepared for the Spring Festival.

He followed the local tradition of making millet wine to celebrate the festival and stored different kinds of meat for the family dinner.

This is the Guo family's first Spring Festival in their new home after they left their hometown because of the major project to divert water from the south to the north of the country.

On May 24, 2010, Guo and his family moved to Huanghu farm in Tuanfeng county form their hometown in Longmentang village in Yunxian county. Though the two places are both in Central China's Hubei province, they are 600 kilometers apart.

"At first, we all doubted whether we could be happy in the new home, but after several months we realized we had a better life here," said Guo.

As members of the group of 2,000 people relocated from Longmentang village, Guo's family live in a 170-square-meter, two-storey cement building instead of their shabby old house in the mountains.

"I never imagined living like this," he said.

Guo once lived in a remote and under-developed village, but the new home is on a plain and is in a much more open location than where they used to live. The new house is only 20 minutes' journey to the nearest downtown area.

Guo said his ancestors lived in an environment filled with dust and mud, but the course of his life was completely changed when he and his family moved to the new house.

"We felt that our life started connecting with modern society," Guo said. He bought several electronic items for the new home, such as a water heater, an air conditioner, a refrigerator and a washing machine.

Because of the refrigerator, Guo said his family could eat fresh meat every day, whereas in the mountain village they could only have salted meat because the nearest food market was far away.

Their new life was not only more convenient due to technology, but also healthier.

"In the new house, we have a separate bathroom and toilet, which was not possible in our previous house," said Huang Qun, Guo's daughter-in-law.

Meanwhile, the Guo family received 32,400 yuan ($4,911) as a reward for participating in the relocation project.

Guo said the payment had helped his family a great deal. A school loan had paid for his elder son's education, and this year his son would graduate and he would have to pay off the money. The reward will help to relieve him of that financial burden.

Beside the reward, the Guo family also received 0.6 hectares of land in compensation for the farmland they had at their previous home.

"I rent the land to locals at the moment but I will learn more about how to farm this land." Guo said he could earn more than 3,000 yuan in rent a year.

In the past year, Guo Jijun said his life had been full of surprises and happiness: he had moved to a new home; found a job in the provincial capital, Wuhan; his elder son would find a good job after receiving a masters degree; and his younger son became a cook after taking employment training.

And Guo is full of confidence about the coming Year of the Rabbit. He thought the new home had been a wonderful start for his family.

"It allows us to see a more colorful world," he said.

China Daily

(China Daily 02/02/2011 page2)