STORY: Impoverished village in SW China witnesses dramatic changes
DATELINE: July 30, 2023
LENGTH: 0:01:40
LOCATION: GUIYANG, China
CATEGORY: ECONOMY/ENVIRONMENT
 
SHOTLIST:
1. various of Haique Village
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (Chinese): WEN ZHENGYOU, Official of Haique Village, Guizhou
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (Chinese): WEN ZHENGYOU, Official of Haique Village, Guizhou
4. various of Guizhou
 
STORYLINE:
 
In the Wumeng Mountains in southwest China's Guizhou Province, there is a village called Haique.
 
The village sits among the karst landform in Bijie City. It once suffered from severe soil erosion, with a forest coverage rate of less than five percent. In the 1980s, all 168 households here lived in poverty.
 
SOUNDBITE 1 (Chinese): WEN ZHENGYOU, Official of Haique Village, Guizhou
"The mountains near our Haique Village used to be barren, because the land was thin and infertile. The annual per capita net income was only 33 yuan (about 5 U.S. dollars) in the 1980s."
 
Things began to change in 1988, when Bijie was set up as a trial zone for poverty alleviation. It took villagers three years to plant about 800 hectares of pine trees on the barren stone mountains.
 
SOUNDBITE 2 (Chinese): WEN ZHENGYOU, Official of Haique Village, Guizhou
"Villagers' income has increased because we have forest farms. Now we have planted apple trees and grown Chinese herbs among them. We have also built greenhouses for edible mushrooms."
 
Haique Village is an epitome of green development in rural China. Not only has the little village undergone a remarkable transformation, but the whole Guizhou Province has seen the changes of these barren mountains.
 
According to the provincial forestry bureau, by the end of 2022, Guizhou's forest coverage rate has reached 62.81 percent, with a forest area of more than 11 million hectares.
 
Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Guiyang, China.
(XHTV)