Residents in Luotuowan village have a busy winter this year. They are building new houses and new roads, a scene never seen in these parts before.
"In past winters, elders just squatted at their house gates to enjoy sunshine with hands buried in sleeves, and some laborers climbed up hills to collect firewood," said Gu Runjin, 68, a Party official in the mountain village in Hebei Province.
"The traditional restful winter has become a busy one," he said.
Deep in the Taihang Mountains, Fuping County, which administers Luotuowan village, has been under a national poverty reduction program since the mid-1990s. In 2013, the county's registered poverty-stricken population was around 110,000, or 48 percent of its total.
Great changes started taking place in this remote village after a visit by Xi Jinping in December 2012, shortly after he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.
During his 2012 trip to the county, Xi told officials to work hard to help villagers in poverty live a better life as soon as possible.
NEW HOMES NEW LIVES
Tang Rongbin, 73, from Luotuowan, and Gu Chenghu, 65, from Gujiatai village, were both visited by Xi in 2012 and then had had their homes rebuilt and living standards improved.
"My current living conditions are almost the same as someone living in the city. I used to live in a clay house and was not accustomed to my new home when I moved in," Gu said. His new house has four bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen.
Since 2013 Gu and his son have been working in construction in the village, earning 200 yuan (29 U.S. dollars) per day. They also receive 4,000 yuan per year to rent their farmland.
Tang Rongbin's house was renovated with a government fund.
"I never dreamed of living in such a house before," he said. He rents three rooms of his house to a tourism company.
Farmers in Luotuowan no longer cultivate the traditional crops of potato and corn, once their major income source. Instead, they grow apple trees and mushrooms, with investment from two companies. This brings more income in the form of rents, salaries and bonuses from the two firms.
Per capita income in the village increased to 3,000 yuan in 2015 from less than 1,000 in 2012. In 2015 alone, 48 families escaped from poverty.
"Poverty reduction cannot simply rely on 'transfusing blood.' We must take advantage of resources and develop industries," said Xu Xiangdong, an official from the provincial housing department who was dispatched to the village to help eradicate poverty.
It is common for officials to be chosen to work in villages on poverty reduction.
In the past four years, Fuping County's per capita income of farmers increased from 3,262 yuan to 5,815 yuan in 2015, and its poverty-hit population has been reduced to 60,000, said Hao Guochi, Fuping Party secretary.
China is aiming to eradicate rural poverty by 2020, lifting the remaining 55 million rural poor out of poverty, roughly 10 million each year. The country's poverty line is 2,300 yuan in annual income.
