Poverty-alleviation fruit helps Ankang Village walk out of the poverty trap

The water pumps that the assisting officials bought for them out of their own pockets were a great help.

Whenever there is any problem with the fruit at home, one phone call brings technicians to the door to help solve it.

In late October, the weather in Ankang Village, Sanmen Town, Longsheng Various Nationalities Autonomous County, located in the mountainous area of northern Guangxi, had already turned somewhat chilly. Villager Yang Xianglin carried basket after basket of monk fruit every day, walking back and forth along the mountain road drenched in sweat.

Ankang Village is a remote village where Zhuang, Han and Yao ethnic groups live together, with a single agricultural structure and a lack of a leading industry. The village currently has 209 households and 875 people, of whom 32 households and 101 people are registered impoverished households.

Yang Xianglin, who only has a primary school education, lived a hard life for 36 years. His mother left home when he was young because the family was poor, and his father died early when he was 4 years old. Growing up with his grandparents, he went through all kinds of hardships, barely scraping by on the one mu and three fen of land the family had, with an annual income of only just over 2,000 yuan.

His utterly destitute home is a wooden house of some age. Apart from an old television that crackles, there are no other electrical appliances in the house.

In October 2015, during the precise identification process, Yang Xianglin was designated an impoverished household. That same month, village-stationed officials and assisting officials entered this household and formed a "paired" and "distant relative" relationship with Yang Xianglin's family.

At that time, when the village officials learned that Yang Xianglin had a strong desire to develop the monk fruit industry but lacked start-up capital, they communicated through multiple channels and obtained start-up funds for Yang Xianglin from the bank.

Having endured hardships and difficulties, Yang Xianglin understood how to prosper through hard work. He actively developed 42 mu of monk fruit cultivation and became a major local grower. But because the land where Yang Xianglin planted monk fruit is high in elevation and cannot be irrigated, watching the monk fruit gradually turn yellow and wither, Yang Xianglin worried until his hair turned white. Having learned of this indirectly, the assisting officials paid more than 1,000 yuan out of their own pockets to buy a water pump, helping him solve the irrigation water problem.

Under Yang Xianglin's careful tending, the monk fruit grew better and better, and smiles gradually appeared on his face.

"I am confident about this year's harvest, and even more confident about shaking off poverty this year," Yang Xianglin said with full confidence. He has currently sold a small portion of his monk fruit, with gross income reaching more than 30,000 yuan.

"With grain in hand, the heart does not panic." Holding the money from selling the fruit, Yang Xianglin thought about continuing to use the money to expand planting next year and to drive other impoverished households to develop together.

In the work of poverty alleviation, Longsheng Various Nationalities Autonomous County has actively implemented industrial poverty alleviation, focusing on enabling impoverished households to escape poverty and become prosperous through developing industries. At present, the industrial acceptance inspection work for all impoverished households in the county has been fully completed, and all industrial subsidies have been fully delivered. More impoverished households like Yang Xianglin are now walking onto the road to prosperity and a moderately prosperous life.