The people of Dabie Mountains who escaped poverty and found prosperity: Dreams in progress

    Jinzhai County in Anhui Province lies deep in the Dabie Mountains. It is an old revolutionary base area and a nationally designated poverty-stricken county.

Zhang Jihe, 41 years old, is a farmer from Xiaonanjing Village, Meishan Town, Jinzhai County. He has only a junior high school education and a physical disability. Thanks to Jinzhai County's industrial poverty alleviation, financial poverty alleviation and photovoltaic poverty alleviation policies in recent years, he now owns a 100-mu orchard, a livestock farm and a 3,000-watt photovoltaic power station. On this particular morning, Zhang Jihe was monitoring and tending his orchard through computer monitoring equipment.

His home is built right beside the orchard, with granaries full and clothing and food sufficient. Now living a prosperous life, Zhang Jihe still sighs with emotion when he recalls the hardship of those years. "I went out to work the year after I graduated from junior high school. I was very young then and knew nothing," Zhang Jihe recalled. "I thought I would struggle on the lowest rung of survival for the rest of my life. I never dreamed that more than twenty years later, I would have a life with no worries about food or clothing."

At noon, Zhang Jihe opened his refrigerator and prepared a meal. Now earning nearly 200,000 yuan a year and easily supporting a family of 6, he knows well that today's prosperous life has not come easily. In 1999, while working away from home, a machinery accident left Zhang Jihe with a grade-three disability. His right arm lost the ability to bear weight, and he could no longer continue working. With no other choice, he returned to his hometown and started a small business, but the business was sluggish and his life fell into difficulty.

Starting in 2011, in response to the large number of labourers leaving to work elsewhere, Jinzhai County promoted the concentration of land into the hands of large-scale operators, cooperatives and leading enterprises. At the same time, it consolidated more than 200 million yuan in agriculture-related funds and arranged 13 million yuan in reward and subsidy funds. To date, it has cultivated more than 2,000 large-scale farming and breeding households, driving more than 10,000 poor households to escape poverty through developing distinctive industries. Zhang Jihe was one of the first to seize the opportunity of industrial poverty alleviation. Starting in 2011, he contracted 100 mu of land through land transfer, and hope was reignited in his life.

The land Zhang Jihe contracted is mainly used for crop cultivation, most of it planted with grapes, covering nearly 60 mu. After picking grapes from his own orchard, Zhang Jihe also uses the techniques and processes he learned to brew some wine, which brings in a considerable additional income when sold. "Life is getting sweeter and sweeter, just like this wine," Zhang Jihe said happily.

In the 100-mu orchard, besides grapes, Zhang Jihe also planted kiwifruit, trichosanthes and so on.

Zhang Jihe's orchard has also boosted employment for other farmers in the village. More than a dozen villagers come to work in the orchard, more than half of them poor households. "There are several other large-scale operators like me in the village. We have all benefited from the good policies," Zhang Jihe told reporters. "Now that our lives are better, we should also help the people in our village more."

In 2012, Jinzhai County was designated by the National People's Congress and the Anhui Provincial Government as a "pilot county for comprehensive rural financial reform." Since then, it has rapidly advanced innovation in financial organizations, products and services, expanded credit lending, and promoted poverty alleviation and development.

In 2012 itself, Zhang Jihe obtained a government interest-subsidized loan of 200,000 yuan, and in 2014 he obtained another government fully interest-subsidized loan of 300,000 yuan, greatly easing his financial pressure.

With the support of financial poverty alleviation policies, in addition to crop farming, Zhang Jihe also tried livestock breeding, raising several hundred chickens, ducks, geese and other poultry, as well as over a hundred rabbits. Zhang Jihe recalled: "In the past, when doing farming and breeding, we all borrowed from loan sharks. The interest was high and the pressure was great. Now with the government's interest-free loans, it's really wonderful!"

In addition to industrial poverty alleviation and financial poverty alleviation, since 2014 Jinzhai County has also creatively implemented photovoltaic poverty alleviation. Zhang Jihe installed a 3,000-watt photovoltaic power station worth 24,000 yuan on his own roof. "I myself only paid 8,000 yuan. The photovoltaic power station manufacturer subsidized 8,000 yuan, and the government subsidized 8,000 yuan." Carefully cleaning the solar panels, he felt deeply grateful as he mentioned the stream of policy benefits.

Up to now, Zhang Jihe's household photovoltaic power station has generated a cumulative total of 3,957.03 kWh, sold to the State Grid at 1 yuan per kWh, increasing his annual income by more than 3,000 yuan for more than 25 years. In Jinzhai County, there are many other farming households benefiting from photovoltaic poverty alleviation just like Zhang Jihe. For each household's 3,000-watt photovoltaic power station, 8,741 households have already been installed and connected to the grid, and 5,000 more are being implemented.