Bearing Fruit

来源 :Beijing Review | 被引量 : 0次 | 上传用户:junfeng_19860313
下载到本地 , 更方便阅读
声明 : 本文档内容版权归属内容提供方 , 如果您对本文有版权争议 , 可与客服联系进行内容授权或下架
论文部分内容阅读
  What do naan bread, paintings drawn with soldering irons, exquisite handmade tamburas, elaborately embroidered garments, edible fungi, raisins, melons and home-baked cakes have in common? They were on display at the sixth China-Eurasia Expo held in Urumqi, capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on August 30 and September 1. They also shared a common origin: They were all products of poverty alleviation programs in Xinjiang.
  In recent years, Xinjiang has launched many targeted anti-poverty programs. In 2017, 317,400 people in Xinjiang were lifted out of poverty, and 331 villages and three counties were taken off the poverty list. The poverty incidence rate dropped from 15.5 percent in 2016 to 12.6 percent, according to the autonomous region’s poverty alleviation and development offi ce.


  Since 2014, government organs, stateowned enterprises and public institutions in Xinjiang have sent task groups to villages and communities to help local residents eliminate poverty, improve infrastructure and strengthen cultural and educational work. With the help of these groups, many achievements have been made.
  Bread earners
  May Yi Village in Artux City had 406 poor households, accounting for 47.7 percent of the population before a rural cooperative specializing in baking naan was set up in the village in March.
  The cooperative employed 25 povertystricken people, turning them into bread earners for their respective families, said Wang Xuanwei, the village head and member of a poverty reduction group. “Now we pro- duce 4,500-6,000 pieces of naan every day. Employees can make 3,000 yuan ($433) a month on average,” he said.
  Naan, the size of basins produced by the cooperative, is particularly impressive. Every bread in a batch bears a different Chinese character at its center, and together they spell out “ethnic unity.” In addition to these large ones, the cooperative produces naan of various sizes.
  They are not only sold locally. The cooperative brought their naan to the sixth ChinaEurasia Expo, where it reached agreements with companies in other Xinjiang cities such as Urumqi and Changji, and provinces such as Guangdong and Shaanxi to ship the bread to them by air to meet market demands.
  Golden eggs
  Standing beside a basket holding two huge yellow melons, Wang Peng, an official with the General Office of the Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, told Beijing Review during the expo that the highly sweet fruit has become a significant source of income for growers.   A photo behind him showed the large egg-shaped melons at harvest, freshly plucked from their vines and piled in the fields in Kara Yar Village in Kashgar Prefecture, ready to be shipped out to market.
  Wang said that when he was sent to the village as part of a poverty alleviation group in March 2017, the villagers mainly made a living from growing wheat and corn, earning a meager income. While trying to fi gure out a way out of poverty, the group found that the village, which lies near the edge of the vast Taklimakan Desert and has abundant sunshine and a big day-and-night temperature variance, is particularly favorable for growing melons.
  The group consulted with agricultural experts, who recommended a melon variety nicknamed the Golden Phoenix, which is known as being fast-maturing and disease resistant.
  After receiving training from the experts, fi ve households planted the fruit in 1.3 hectares. Although disease reduced the expected yield by two thirds, they still made more money than when they planted corn.
  This year, 20 households planted 6.7 hectares of the melon, which are expected to generate an income of nearly 550,000 yuan ($79,375), enough to lift them out of poverty.
  As ways to enrich local farmers are explored, plant species not indigenous to Xinjiang have been introduced into the region, such as black edible fungi. The fungus, literally meaning “black wood ears,” is a common ingredient in Chinese dishes prized for its medical value such as resisting blood coagulation and lowering blood lipids.


  Ayagesa Village in Hotan Prefecture has 16 greenhouses for growing the fungi, one plant for producing fungi bags and a workshop for packaging dried fungi. Thirty poverty-stricken households are engaged in the business and can produce about 15 tons of fungi annually.
  “The weather is suitable for the cultivation of black edible fungi in Xinjiang,”Huang Xiong, an official with the Food and Drug Administration of Xinjiang, told Beijing Review. “Trial cultivation started last winter and mass production began in the spring. A technician from Mudanjiang City in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast was invited to the village to provide technical assistance.” He said that it took fungi, sown onto the sawdust of walnut and apricot trees, six months to ripen. The first batch weighed 5 tons and procured impressive profi ts.
  Photos of the production process displayed at the expo showed the fungi growing in rows of cylinder-shaped white fungi bags with ventilating holes. The white bags are neatly arrayed on the fl oor of greenhouses. After they ripen, they are picked and dried on shelves.   Zhang Shufang, a resident in Urumqi, bought several bags of edible black fungi from Ayagesa’s booth at the expo. She said that she eats black edible fungi every other day because she believes that it can clear impurities in the blood.
  Multi-pronged assistance
  There were more than 100 booths set up for the first time at the sixth China-Eurasia Expo to showcase Xinjiang’s achievements in eliminating poverty.
  Since 2014, the State Grid Xinjiang Electric Power Co. Ltd. has sent four poverty alleviation groups to Cele County in Hotan.
  The company has also installed solar power generation equipment, street lamps and electric heating systems for the villages receiving its help.
  Its poverty reduction groups help villagers develop modern green agriculture, such as planting jujube trees, processing walnuts into oil and making rose jelly, which is improving the quality and value of agricultural products. The income from the projects is either distributed among villagers or reinvested to expand production.
  They also organize job fairs, recruit people to do jobs such as picking cotton in rural cooperatives and deliver training by, for instance, inviting vocational school teachers to train villagers in welding and other skills.
  Efforts have also been made to improve villagers’ living and production conditions. For example, the anti-poverty workers help villagers replace their adobe beds with modern wood beds. They teach villagers to improve their quality of life by growing vegetables and cash crops, instead of just letting grass and trees grow in their yards. They also open charity supermarkets and donate clothes to villagers.
  During the expo, deals were signed to sell the products of Xinjiang’s poverty alleviation programs to other markets at home and abroad, generating more income for producers and proving to be a successful means of highlighting the region’s advancements.
其他文献
On the fi rst fl oor of Xiamen’s International Conference and Exhibition Center, a staff member from Mali’s Investment Promotion Agency is busy setting up a booth. Publicity posters are hung all over
期刊
Chinese President Xi Jinping visits an exhibition in Shenzhen that marking Guangdong Province’s achievements during reform and opening up over the past 40 years on October 24.  Xi made an inspection t
期刊
Mengke Dalai wanted to escape from the Kubuqi Desert where ecological degradation was making his life increasingly harsh. “The grassland became sandy as the grass disappeared. After that we struggled
期刊
With machines roaring, workers at a corn-processing factory in Xiangyang Village of Zhaodong, Suihua City in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, were busy peeling, washing, boiling and then packa
期刊
More than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to pull the United States out of the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, the California state government took up the baton to host th
期刊
Mahnoor Fatima studies sociology at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology in Karachi, but she hopes to work at a Chinese company after graduation so as to participate in
期刊
Owners who regard their pets as family members are worried about the apparently shorter lifespan of their animals in China.  “In Japan, the average lifespan of cats is 18 years, but Chinese cats hardl
期刊
Actors perform a dance drama at the opening ceremony of the 15th Inner Mongolia Grassland Cultural Festival in Hohhot, capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, on August 8. The festi
期刊
To ensure the stability of the financial market, especially maintaining the expectations of stock market investors, will be the focus of the capital market for some time to come. Currently, the Chines
期刊
The world’s fi rst national expo on imports, the China International Import Expo (CIIE), will be held on November 5-10 in Shanghai and is expected to draw more than 150,000 purchasers from home and ab
期刊