Zhou Haibo, a woman villager from Junxian Township, in central China's Hubei Province, rose at 5:00 AM on Thursday to help pack up the family belongings.

Zhou's family of five joined 24 other households from Guanmenyan Village, the same village where Zhou lived, and set out in buses at 7:15 AM for a new village in Nancheng, Zaoyang City, more than 200 km east of the village.

That was a scene taking place Thursday when 75 families, including Zhou's, were moved from three villages in Danjiangkou, a city in Hubei Province, to make way for construction of the central route of the South-to-North water diversion project

Those being relocated, some 333 villagers, will settle in two other cities of Zaoyang and Jingmen in the same province. They make up part of the 23,000 people who will be relocated in Hubei and Henan provinces.

Unlike Zhou and her fellow villagers, 50 other families from Fenggou and Aihe, two villages in Xijiadian Township, involving 232 people, were transported by bus to another new village built for resettlers in the Qujialing administrative district of Jingmen City on Thursday. Furniture and luggage were also trucked over, said a source from the Danjiangkou City government on Thursday.

Zaoyang and Jingmen are prosperous cities in the fertile valley formed by the Hanjiang River, an important tributary of the Yangtze River, the longest in China.

The source of the central route of the South-to-North water diversion project, the Danjiangkou reservoir, sits on the Hubei and Henan border.

"I have mixed feelings today," said 34-year-old Zhou. "On one hand I hate to leave my ancestral home, on the other, the new home in Zaoyang is more favorably positioned: on the plain, convenient transport and more opportunities for development."

Zhou said she planned to run a home business selling pickles together with her husband in addition to tilling the farmland. "I wish life would get better and better," said Zhou, who has two children.

In accordance with the construction plan, the Danjiangkou dam will be raised so the reservoir's water level will increase from 157 meters to 170 meters, and the reservoir's storage capacity will increase by 11.6 billion cubic meters.

To make way for the central route, 330,000 people in Hubei and Henan are to be relocated. And 23,000 of them will be relocated in the two provinces by September.

Some 10,600 residents of Xichuan, a county north of the Danjiangkou Reservoir, will move to 10 newly-built villages in 10 different counties of Henan. Their relocation began on Sunday and is expected to be completed by September 10, according to the relocation plan designed by the project's Henan provincial office.

In Hubei, the 12,000 rural residents requiring relocation, including the 333 who were moved Thursday, are expected to be resettled by late September.

Apart from Jingmen and Zaoyang, resettlement centers have been built in Xiangfan, Yicheng and Tuanfeng, all in Hubei, to take people from the reservoir area.

Preferential policies for resettlers abound. For instance, apart from compensation for unmovable property with the old home, each family to be relocated will be allotted new arable land in the newly built village according to a standard of 0.1 hectare per person, plus an annual subsidy of 600 yuan (about US$88) a person for 20 years, according to Duan Shiyao, deputy chief of Hubei Provincial Resettlement Bureau.

Villager Xu Jiajun from Fenggou Village, who moved to the new village in Qujialing administrative district of Jingmen City, on Thursday, said he saw hope in the new life after the resettlement.

"I wish I could have moved to my new home earlier because the new village in Jingmen has better conditions," said the 54-year-old Xu. "After resettlement, I have more options than before: I could continue to till the land, grow vegetables as other locals do, or go out to work as a migrant worker."

Xu's family of seven moved into a two-storey house with a floor space of 170 square meters. The government has given the family 3,500 yuan as a fund to financing the move.

Villager He Xinsheng and his family from Longkou Village are scheduled to move to new villages built in Jingmen City on Saturday.

"My new home in Jingmen has such advantages: good environment, and easy access, easy to visit medical doctors or go to school, so I want to move," said the 37-year-old He.

His father agreed. He Dafa, 62, who sees resettlement as an opportunity for people who have lived in the mountains for generations to seek an easy life.

"Our home in the reservoir area is inconvenient to access and we have to go by boat whenever we want to move around, which is time consuming and unsafe. Many young people are unwilling to return once they go out to work in cities as migrant workers," said He Senior.

"We have chosen to move out with hopes of supporting the construction of the South-to-North water diversion project and benefiting our descendants by making a living outside the big mountains as well," said old He.

(Xinhua News Agency August 21, 2009)