Industries nurtured as part of resettlement plan in Hebei province provide job opportunities and ensure stable income for the residents

Dressed in a dark blue uniform and wearing white rubber gloves, Wen Huarong walks into a pigeon shed with a pen and a notebook to keep a count of the birds that have laid eggs.

"Five days later, I need to check if the eggs have successfully fertilized. If not, I would take them out and leave the fertilized ones to be hatched," said the 48-year-old pigeon raiser whose shed houses 1,800 pairs of pigeons.

Wen lives in Jiaoqing, a village in Fuping, a formerly poverty-stricken county in North China's Hebei province.

About 250 kilometers southwest of Beijing, the county is located deep in the Taihang Mountains, which starts from the capital and runs through the provinces of Hebei, Shanxi and Henan.

Wen also knows how to find out if an egg is fertilized or not, using a flashlight. "If you see no red spot inside the egg when you flash the light on it, it means it is not fertilized," Wen said.

As a pigeon raiser, she is able to earn a sufficient income for a decent living. Not long before, she was poor.

In Fuping, about 87 percent of its 2,496-square-km land is a mountainous region which is equivalent to about one-seventh of Beijing's area.

The county's 230,000 population has only 0.064 hectares of arable land, which was the main source of income for the locals some years ago.

Fuping got its name nearly a thousand years ago. While Fu means prosperity, ping means safety. The region was one of the poorest in northern China.

Biggest bottleneck

"The biggest bottleneck was we had no pillar industries and no leading companies," said Liu Jing, Party secretary of the county.

In 2014, when a nationwide campaign was conducted to register all the poor households below the national poverty line－those with an annual per capita income of 2,736 yuan ($392)－more than 100,000 residents of Fuping were classified as poor, accounting for more than half of its population.

After the campaign examined the reasons behind their poor living conditions, the government devised a poverty alleviation program for them.

The information about their living conditions was recorded in a file, which was handed to each targeted household.

Wen's family too received one. She and her family－husband, two children and her husband's elder brother－used to live in a 50-square-meter hovel built in 1975.

"The walls were made from clay and the roof leaked every time it rained," she said.

The family's main sources of income were corn and potatoes that they grew on barren land. "To buy daily necessities, we had to walk more than 10 kilometers to a village."

The village had a primary school where her children studied.

Wen, who is from Santai, a county in Sichuan province, got married in 1994. "I never thought the conditions would be so bad," Wen said.

She recalled that once a young villager had brought them a flashlight, but his parents didn't know how to switch it off. They put it in water thinking that it could be put out like fire.

When her husband was incapacitated by cerebral hemorrhage in 2010, the entire family responsibility fell on Wen.

Fewer industries and limited transport facilities had led to poverty and backwardness in the county.

President Xi Jinping, who is also the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, visited two impoverished villages in the county toward the end of 2012.

Xi visited the villagers' homes in Luotuowan and Gujiatai in Longquanguan town.

During his visit, Xi said local Party and government authorities should place more emphasis on helping people out of poverty, especially those in the impoverished regions.

President's suggestion

Xi also said the authorities should strive to find the right way to bring the people out of poverty in a "scientific manner".

During a chat with the villagers, he paid attention to their problems in daily life, including those related to income, food, education and healthcare.

Seven years later, the villagers' problems had been resolved.

Wen was one of the residents to cast off poverty in Fuping.

In November last year, Wen's family moved into a 125-sq-m newly built apartment in a residential community near the county's center. The community was built by local government.

"I had never dreamed of living in a house like this," Wen said. The new home is like a paradise－it has four bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and two washrooms.

According to Wen, the community is close to an asphalt road linking to downtown. About 100 meters to its east is a primary school and around 200 meters to the west is a hospital.

There's also a supermarket in the community, she said.

"It's clean, comfortable and convenient," she said.

Like Wen, almost 18,000 households in Fuping have relocated to the new apartments, which come in dimensions of 50, 75, 100 and 125 square meters.

The project was rolled out as part of China's rural poverty alleviation and development by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, China Cabinet, in 2011.

The targeted people are those living in poor conditions, while the aim is to improve their work and living environment.

At present, a total of 41 resettlement communities have been built in Fuping, providing new homes for 17,714 households, including 10,313 classified as "living in poverty".

Nurturing industries

The resettlement plan also required local authorities to nurture and develop industries near the newly built residential communities. Job opportunities had to be created so that residents could have a stable income.

Wen got the job of a pigeon raiser after she moved into her new home. The breeding center is just 5 kilometers from her home.

The pigeon shed belongs to Fuping Selenium Pigeon Industry Co, a Beijing-based company which breeds pigeons for meat.

"I received three months of training initially, when I was paid 2,500 yuan, 2,700 yuan and 3,000 yuan each month." After the training, she was made in charge of a shed that held 1,800 pairs of pigeons.

She earns about 1.6 yuan for producing one squab－unfledged bird or a bird without sufficient feathers for flight. Her pigeons can produce about 2,500 unfledged pigeons each month, which earns her 4,000 yuan.

"I can make more money in future with my skills gradually improving," she said.

The company, which was set up in 2018, has hired more than 600 local residents as pigeon raisers, each of whom earn about 50,000 yuan annually.

It has also rented 156 hectares of land from 1,500 households, who receive 15,000 yuan as rent for each hectare.

Poultry farming, including raising of pigeons, pigs and chickens, is one of the six industries that Fuping has developed in recent years to lift the villagers out of poverty, according to the county's Party secretary Liu Jing.

Planting of edible fungus, fruits and Chinese medical herbs, and promotion of cottage industries and ecological tourism has also helped the villagers.

Cottage industry is labor-intensive and it can generate numerous jobs for residents of Fuping who have little education.

Liu Jing said that 70 edible fungus planting centers, 27 orchards, 70 livestock breeding centers and 34 handicraft workshops have been established near the 41 resettlement communities to ensure at least one person in each family has a stable job near their home.

With the industries developing, Fuping has gradually overcome poverty. Last year, the number of registered impoverished people in the country fell to 832, accounting for just 0.45 percent of the population.

By the end of June, the remaining poor rose up above the national poverty line of about 4,000 yuan. No one in the county is now living below the poverty line.

The average annual per capita disposable income of the rural residents rose from 3,262 yuan in 2012 to 9,844 yuan last year.

Young people return

After the new developments, Fuping has seen nearly 5,000 young people coming back. They would go to big cities in search of work since the county had fewer opportunities.

Zhang Xiaoliang, 35, for instance, returned in 2016 from Beijing, where he worked for three years as a construction worker. "It's too hard for people like us to live in Beijing," Zhang said, adding that he used to earn about 20,000 yuan a year.

"The rent and daily expenses are too high in Beijing, so I could save little money at the end of every year," he said.

After hearing about a company planting shiitake mushrooms－a kind of mushroom widely used in Chinese cooking－in the Tianshengqiao town of Fuping was hiring people to manage the plantations, Zhang decided to go back home.

As a contractor for the company, he began to take care of two greenhouses, where shiitake mushrooms were grown. According to Zhang, these greenhouses fetched him 80,000 yuan a year on average, four times of what he was earning in Beijing.

"I could save most of the money I earned and spend time with family every day," he said, adding that contractors like him only had to take care of their mushrooms.

The rest of the work, including making mushroom sticks (made of materials such as wood chips and fungus seeds that aid the growth of mushrooms), and promoting and selling mushrooms was the responsibility of Fuping Jiaxin Planting Co, which was set up in 2015 as part of the poverty alleviation measure.

The company has more than 2,000 greenhouses in eight towns of Fuping with more than 1,000 contractors like Zhang, according to Qi Jianli, general manager of the company.

Hundreds of local residents work for the company, earning about 5,000 yuan every month, Qi said.

"The edible fungus grows well in the county, thanks to the cool weather, clean air and water," the manager said.

"The poverty alleviation industries have enhanced people's incomes and injected new vitality to the county's overall economic development," said Liu Jing.

Meanwhile, Zhang's brother too is taking care of two greenhouses for the company. "My entire family has come together, and we all depend on it (mushrooms)," his brother said.