A Tibetan village’s journey to prosperity

By:China Tibet Online
update:November 01,2017

Nov.1,2017--On a Fall October day, a dozen villagers are working on slopes in the village of Erguxi in Li County of Aba, southwest China's Sichuan Province, at an altitude of 3,000 meters.

The villagers were harvesting cabbage, then weighed and packed them. In just a few hours, the trucks are almost full.

"We started working at eight am, and will be done with this three mu (0.2 hectares) field by two pm,"said villager Tsewangtou.

He said, in the past, villagers had to carry the harvested vegetables on the back of horses as a result of poor transportation and it took two hours to walk to the foot of the mountain from the village.

"Now that we have better road, it's much faster to get our products out.”

Erguxi Village is a typical high-altitude Tibetan village in mountainside, with 276 residents in 67 households living on four separate mountaintops.

The road Tsewangtou mentioned is the cement road finished in June of this year, which have a total distance of 26 km. The roads connect all four production teams of the village.

In 2017, Li County invested 17 million yuan (2.56 million US dollars) in improving rural roads. As of now, the roads in all 81 villages of the county are completed.

Wu Erjian, who works out of the village, rarely has a chance to go home. In his memory, his hometown is beautiful but remote.

"It took 40 minutes to come down the mountain and an hour and half to climb up, and you need several stop to have a rest,"said Wu Erjian, who remembered that the old roads were so tough that he often fell.

"Now, the new road makes going home so much easier.”