Gansu village marches to new future

A villager in Zhoujiawan picks red peppers she planted. The film on the grounds plays a big role in keeping the water from evaporating. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

It takes two hours' drive on a slightly bumpy and winding road for our bus to arrive at Zhoujiawan village. The view of the grand mountain and the terrace fields along the way is impressive. Unfortunately, a beautiful view does not equal a decent life.

Zhoujiawan is one of the typical villages in eastern Gansu province where the scarce rainfall means the yield from farmlands depends largely on nature. As a saying goes, it is a place "hit by drought nine out of 10 years". To provide for drinking and irrigation, water cellars are excavated in each family to collect rainwater flowing down from houses and courtyard.

And the land is also scarce: Each family has an average of around 20 mu of lands (1.3 ha), and most of it is on the slopes. To expand the area of farmlands, locals level the sloping lands and cultivate on terrace fields.

The village's remoteness from the nearest town also means that transportation is a problem. In the past, the village was connected with the county seat Huining by a dirt road built on a cliff which became impassible in rain and snow. It was so narrow that two tricycles, a major transport vehicle of the villagers, could not pass through at the same time, and so dusty that the oil and sugar villagers bought from the town would be covered with flying dust during the transport.

The harsh natural conditions make it hard for villagers to make a decent income by farming, said Wang Rui, a publicity official of Huining county.

In 2015, more than half of the 1,840 villagers in Zhoujiawan still lived under the poverty line, which means they earned less than 2,800 yuan ($420) in net income a year. But the poverty number is expected to drop to less than 200 by the end of this year, largely as a result of more government fund and better farming practice.

Wang Hai, 52, is one of the beneficiaries of a series of anti-poverty tools.

Wang has more than 20 mu of lands on which he grows potato and corn. The yield per mu can surpass 1,000 jin (500 kg) in a good year, compared with 200 jin per mu in the past.

The change in output is attributed to a water-saving technique called "film farming" – a layer of film covered on the ground which can keep more water in the soil and remarkably reduce evaporation. The introduction of technique was not smooth, as some villagers thought it was too complicated, said Wang Rui. They only started to accept it after seeing the benefits of those who used the technique first and with the assistance from agricultural technicians.

In May, Wang Hai also set up a chicken farm in which he raised more than 1,000 chickens using the fund granted by the local government. He earned 3,600 yuan a month from selling eggs. It may not sound a lot of money to someone from big cities, but it is huge amount in a mountainous village in Gansu.

Wang said he has a designated technical official to guide him in the raising, which makes the whole process much easier. Two months ago, his son even bought a video monitoring system to help manage the chicken farm. After it was installed, Wang no longer needed to go to check the chickens in the hen several times a day.

Besides, chickens' excrement can be used as fertilizer for the farmland, which in turn produces fodder for them, making a sustainable cycle.

The infrastructure of the village has also improved. An asphalt road replaced the old one that connected the village to the town. Compared with the nearly three-hour travel out of the village in the past, it now only takes less than two hours to villagers to go to the nearest town.