-- More than half a million people living on the southwestern Chinese border have thrown off the shackles of poverty.
-- The canyon area of the Nujiang River originating from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is one of China's poorest regions.
-- The area has been transformed thanks to a nationwide poverty-relief campaign.
By Xinhua writers Wu Xiaoyang, Zhao Jiasong, and Zhao Peiran
KUNMING, Jan. 23 -- More than half a million people living on the southwestern Chinese border have thrown off the shackles of poverty, their ancestors having long been isolated from the rest of the world.
The Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province sits in the Hengduan Mountains. Its fold ranges, dubbed the "wrinkles of the Earth," were shaped by the most intense plate movements on the planet.
The canyon area of the Nujiang River originating from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is one of China's poorest regions, home to those who make humble livings by farming the land with limited acreage. But now, it has been transformed thanks to a nationwide poverty-relief campaign.
Villagers harvest Amomum Tsao-ko in Fugong County of Lisu Autonomous Prefecture of Nujiang, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Oct. 28, 2019. (Xinhua)
BUILDING LIFELINES
He Xiaoyong, 41, is a member of the Dulong ethnic group, which has a small population of about 7,000, 60 percent of whom live in the Dulongjiang Township of Gongshan County.
In 1964, the local government opened a horse track across the neighboring Gaoligong Mountain, on which horse caravans carried food, salt and drugs to the secluded locality before the village was snowbound each year.
"It took us 12 days to go back and forth from our village to the county seat. It was difficult. We risked our lives during every trip as accidents like landslides, rolling stones or avalanches could occur at any time," said He.
In 1999, a simple road was built in Dulongjiang, and it was the first time that most Dulong people had seen an automobile. He sold his horses and purchased a tractor with savings he had collected for years, as horse caravans were no longer needed.
