In the northwest of Yunnan, Gaoligong Mountain stands majestically, and the water of Dulong River flows mightily.
There are only about 7,000 Dulong people in the country, and more than 4,000 people live in Dulongjiang Township, Gongshan County, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture. In historical documents, the record of the Dulong clan is "like an ancient people". Dulongjiang Township, known as the "Far Frontier Land", was once one of the poorest areas in Yunnan and even China due to its harsh natural conditions.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, under the care and deployment of the Party Central Committee, the Dulong ethnic group has been lifted out of poverty at the end of 2018 and started a new journey towards a happier and better life.
A view of Kongdang Village, Dulongjiang Township, Gongshan Dulong Nu Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. Photo by Hu Chao
Looking at the world, poverty governance remains the core issue of global development governance, and anti-poverty is a common task of mankind. Countries are on the way to implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and many scholars have conducted in-depth research on poverty and explored various ways to combat it.
The answer echoes in the canyon. In the past five years since Dulongjiang Township was lifted out of absolute poverty, we can truly see the measures and results of China's poverty governance and sustainable development, as well as the important reference significance for the underdeveloped areas of the global economy.
The small mountain township embraces the big market
Li Wenshi, a literary woman of the Dulong clan who is over the age of old, is used to seeing the rain and snow in the canyon, and now she has seen more tourists coming and going. In Dizhengdang Village, Dulongjiang Township, she often weaves cloth in her small yard, and the colorful cotton threads spread like a rainbow in her calloused hands.
At first, Dulong blankets were mostly woven from dyed twine. In the past, due to the dangerous roads and inconvenient transportation, the mountains were closed by heavy snow for half a year every winter, and the Dulong River Gorge was almost isolated from the world. It takes several days to walk from Dulongjiang Township to Gongshan County, which results in a lack of materials for weaving Dulong blankets - only hemp, which is neither rough nor beautiful. Li Wenshi is still unforgettable, in order to obtain more comfortable and beautiful materials, she once spent more than half a month to walk the post road to Gongshan County, and carried back dozens of catties of daily necessities and colored cotton thread in one go.
On May 10, 2022, in Dizhengdang Village, Dulongjiang Township, Li Wenshi (left), an elderly man of the Dulong ethnic group, and his daughter were weaving Dulong blankets. Photo by Cao Mengyao
In 2014, the Gaoligongshan Tunnel of Dulongjiang Highway was opened to traffic, completely ending the history of heavy snow closure in Dulongjiang Township in winter. Now, the road is paved with asphalt and can reach the county seat in more than 2 hours.
More and more colorful cotton threads and wool threads have been transported into Dulongjiang Township, making Dulong blankets gorgeous, with more colorful colors and soft and comfortable materials. Locals not only make them into backpacks, scarves, and horse coats, but also develop new products such as headwear and earrings that are popular with tourists.
The change of color and material of Dulong blanket is a microcosm of China's poverty alleviation practice. How to bring low-income people in remote areas into the market and let the market play a positive role is a common problem faced by all countries in poverty control.
For Dulongjiang, it is even more difficult to connect with the national market - inconvenient transportation, poor information, low quality of the population, and people's awareness of commodities has only sprouted in recent years.
As the locals say, there are two roads that are like an epic in the history of national development, one is the Dulongjiang Highway and the other is the information highway.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, the masses here still lived a primitive life of "carving wooden knots and ropes, and distinguishing the time when birds and flowers bloom". Due to the barrier of the mountains, the villages in Dulongjiang Township are far apart, and the "firing guns to transmit messages" has been used in the villages of Dulongjiang Township for many years, until October 2004, when the township opened a mobile communication network, it gradually withdrew from the historical stage.
In May 2019, China Mobile Yunnan opened a 5G trial base station in Dulongjiang Township, and the information superhighway was connected to allow local people to enter the 5G era.
On April 19, 2019, Xiong Yulan, a girl from the Dulong ethnic group, experienced VR glasses in Dulongjiang Township, Gongshan County, Nujiang Prefecture. Photo by Jiang Wenyao
With the continuous improvement of infrastructure such as roads, communications, electricity, and logistics, Dulongjiang Township has set off an upsurge of Douyin live broadcast and online delivery, and a number of "Internet celebrities with goods" have emerged. Through the 5G network, they used short videos and live broadcasts to let more people know about the secret Dulongjiang.
Mu Xiaolong, the head of Dulongjiang Township, said that with the high-speed and stable 5G network and convenient logistics, Dulongjiang Township specialties such as honey, grass fruits, Chinese medicinal materials, morels, and Dulong blankets have been continuously sold all over the country. In addition to e-commerce, digital construction is also gradually advancing in other fields. The Dulongjiang Township Government has built an e-government platform to improve work efficiency. In the past, villagers used to go to the township to do errands, and often couldn't finish it in one day, but now it only takes a few minutes to complete it in the village.
Turning natural persons into "market persons"
In Dizhengdang Village, at the home of Dulong villager Long Yongsheng, a large-screen smart TV is connected to China Mobile's broadband network. Through the "intelligent self-diagnosis" function on the TV, she only needs to spend 10 yuan a month to get 3 opportunities for video consultations with doctors in tertiary hospitals, and this service can be canceled at any time.
It is not easy to build a communication base station in the depths of a remote mountain. Ma Chunhai, deputy general manager of Nujiang Mobile's Gongshan branch, is a native of the Dulong ethnic group, and his wish is to break the local communication bottleneck.
Dizhengdang Village is the most remote village in Dulongjiang Township. The communication base station here is the last one built in the township, and the computer room of five or six square meters is built with a single piece of bluestone weighing dozens of kilograms.
"It was difficult to transport the bricks in, so I had to use stones from local materials, and it took two years to build this base station and prepare materials. Ma Chunhai said. Since 2004, he has set up a communication base station in Dulongjiang Township. "We are most looking forward to Dulongjiang Township's 'three links and one level': road communication, electricity communication, network communication, and people's safety. ”
At present, the overall coverage rate of 4G network in Dulongjiang Township has reached 100%, and the overall coverage rate of 5G has reached more than 80%, and new models such as "Internet + education", "Internet + medical care" and "Internet + e-commerce" have been implemented, connecting remote mountain towns and the national market.
Not only communications, but also after the entire ethnic group has been lifted out of poverty, the government has continued to invest in this remote corner, regulating various resource elements, especially through funds, resources, services, etc., to accurately drip irrigate the people who have the ability to work out of poverty, helping them steadily cross the market threshold and further consolidate the results of poverty alleviation.
In the army of transformation from natural persons to "market people", there are ancient old people like Li Wenshi. From sunrise to sunset, she is always idle, weaving Dulong blankets and selling them to customers from all over the world - some are tourists who come here, and some are netizens attracted by her daughter's webcast and WeChat circle of friends. Li Wenshi does not speak Mandarin, but he uses WeChat to receive money. Since the Spring Festival in 2023, the sales revenue of her family's woven Dulong blanket has been more than 20,000 yuan.
On November 14, 2023, at the grass fruit planting base in Dulongjiang Township, Gongshan County, Yunnan Province, villagers were picking grass fruits. (Xinhua News Agency)
Not only Dulong blankets, but also Dulongjiang's agricultural products have also become best-selling commodities. In 2007, Dulongjiang Township began to plant grass fruits, and the current planting area of grass fruits in the township has reached 83,000 mu, with an output value of 20.25 million yuan.
"My family grows more than 30 acres of grass and fruits, and I can earn almost 10,000 yuan a year. Meng Guorong, a villager in Bapo Village, said, "For those who plant more, the income of grass and fruit alone can reach 100,000 yuan a year." ”
In addition to grass and fruit, Dulong cattle, beekeeping, tourism and other industries in Dulongjiang Township have also achieved initial results. According to Mu Xiaolong, the per capita net income of farmers in the township in 2023 will be 17,424 yuan, doubling from 7,637 yuan in 2019.
After crossing the market threshold, people not only turn labor into income, but also turn resources into income, private houses into homestays, and villagers into tourism practitioners. Dulong River Scenic Area was successfully established as the first national 4A-level tourist attraction in Nujiang Prefecture. What was once a remote place off the beaten track has now become a "secret place for nurturing the heart" that travelers yearn for.
Building a "Ladder of Hope" Together
With a high-quality communication network, the villagers of Dizhengdang Village have consciously improved their digital literacy and become more energetic.
"Now the people in the village are better at dressing up, talking, and learning to shoot Tik Tok than before. Yang Wenbin, the first secretary of Dizhengdang Village in Dulongjiang Township, said that after obtaining information from the outside world through the Internet, the villagers have a harder "waist pole" when selling agricultural products and handmade products. "In the past, the boss from other places came in to receive the goods, and whatever the price was, it was the price. Now the common people are taking it out and selling it themselves, and they can sell it at a higher price. After the information is smooth, everyone's life is different. ”
On May 19, 2023, a new energy vehicle was charged at a charging pile in Dulongjiang Township. (Xinhua News Agency)
To help people out of poverty firmly climb the "ladder of hope" of development, it is necessary for multiple actors to participate in governance, jointly improve people's self-development capabilities, and achieve effective and sustainable poverty reduction. Among them, twinning assistance is an important policy tool for China to support remote and backward areas.
Since 1995, CCCG, located in Beijing, has been providing fixed-point assistance to Nujiang Prefecture for 29 years, with a total investment of 3.3 billion yuan. Among them, since 2020, CCCG has invested 1.4 billion yuan to consolidate the achievements of poverty alleviation and effectively connect with rural revitalization, injecting huge financial, human and material resources into various industries from grass and fruit processing factories to rural tourism development.
The relatively backward Dulongjiang Township is the focus of assistance. In order to meet the needs of harvesting, drying and processing of agricultural and sideline products such as grass and fruits in the township, a characteristic manor of agricultural and sideline products has been built in the local area, with a daily processing capacity of 60 tons. The manor was built by CCCG with an investment of 10 million yuan, which is an important project to help the development of local industries and broaden the channels for increasing the income of the masses.
In April 2022, with the help of CCCG, Dulongjiang Township established a construction company belonging to the village collective, and hired Zhang Jinhua, a well-known local contractor, as the manager to undertake CCCG's assistance projects and local government's cash-for-work projects. In the past two years, the company has undertaken 23 projects, distributed 3.16 million yuan in dividends to village collectives and wealthy leaders, realized an average of 300,000 yuan in the collective economy of 6 administrative villages, and has driven more than 1,300 local people to participate in work, with a total of 7.25 million yuan in wages and more than 5,000 yuan per capita.
By participating in the construction company's project, many young adults of the Dulong ethnic group have learned "technical work" such as scaffolding, painting, and formwork, which have come in handy in the construction of their hometown. The Dulongjiang Township Government carried out environmental improvement at the village, roadside and riverside, and mobilized villagers to build their own courtyards and micro-vegetable gardens in the form of work-for-relief. The government provides cement and subsidies, and the villagers work and work. Using the skills they learned at a construction company, they built their own flower stands, planted flowers and plants, and built vegetable gardens.
The process of homeland construction is also a process of ideological transformation. Chen Xiao, deputy head of Dulongjiang Township, said that at first, some villagers were not highly motivated in the construction of beautiful courtyards. Under the leadership of local cadres, the masses saw that their hometowns were becoming more and more clean and beautiful, their concepts gradually changed, their attitudes became more and more positive, and they were full of enthusiasm for building their homes.
Change the mental outlook of the locals
From ziplines, rattan bridges to mountain roads, and then to today's Dulongjiang Highway, from "firing guns to transmit messages" to 5G connectivity outside the mountains, from the branch houses to today's beautiful and distinctive houses, people are increasingly embracing this open road for the future. The development process of Dulongjiang Township has become a microcosm of the development and changes of the people of all ethnic groups in the border areas under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.
The thinking of the local people has changed, the quality has been improved, and the education has achieved tremendous development. Looking back on history, from the end of the primitive society of isolation and slash-and-burn cultivation to the socialist society, Dulongjiang Township only had its first primary school in 1956. Nowadays, the children here enjoy modern education and teaching resources, and many of them return to their hometowns after going out to study and build their hometowns.
On March 9, 2021, students at Dulongjiang Township Central School were doing recess exercises. Photo by Chen Xinbo
Located on the bank of the Dulong River, the nine-year school in Dulongjiang Township is full of vitality. In this school, the teaching building decorated with rainbow-colored stripes and the pattern of the dragon bull's head is unique, and the modern teaching facilities such as laboratories, computer rooms, and multimedia classrooms are complete, which is the cradle of modern education for children in the mountains.
Relying on the private education network, China Mobile helped Dulongjiang Nine-Year School build information-based classrooms to realize remote interactive teaching between teachers and students in Dulongjiang and Kunming, Shanghai and other places. Yang Pengju, a biology teacher in charge, said that local primary school students have been learning information technology courses since the third grade through electronic teaching, and "now, the high-quality resources of the Shanghai twinning schools are shared through the online platform, and open classes can be held online."
It is better to teach a man to fish than to teach him to fish. Learning new skills and forming new concepts, the spirit of the Dulong people is becoming more and more abundant, and they are constantly making new attempts. The reporter went deep into Dulongjiang Township for many interviews, and could clearly feel the changes in the ideological concepts and mental state of the locals. Many people have become introverted and evasive from the beginning, and have become active in communicating with foreign guests, and also taking the initiative to "advertise" the beautiful scenery and specialties of their hometown.
In embracing the wave of modernization, Dulongjiang has its own changes and changes. Today, the houses in the canyon are not only beautiful and safe, but also more and more ethnic. Shanghai Pudong New Area and CCCG helped build the "Crowlo" rural revitalization demonstration site in Dizhengdang Village. "Crowlo" means "beautiful place on the bank of the Dulong River" in Dulong language, and its main house is based on the traditional house of the Dulong people, "Mulen House", which is built with local materials, highlighting the traditional architectural characteristics of the Dulong people, including the "nostalgic memory" water mill, the "Kaquewa" festival activity venue, etc., so that the national cultural inheritance has a new carrier.
As early as 2015, Dulongjiang Township established the Dulong Handicraft Association, which organizes multiple trainings in traditional skills such as textile, woodworking and wood carving every year, and has trained more than 200 people. Li Wenshi, who is nearly 80 years old, still weaves, working in the field on sunny days, weaving and teaching on rainy days, and many young people in the village learn textile skills from her.
Li Wenshi's daughter Li Yuhua is also a good hand at weaving Dulong blankets. In her spare time, she also browses interesting cultural creations on her mobile phone, wanting to combine them with Dulong Carpet. "In the past, when there was no electricity or internet, the family would go to bed early as soon as it was dark, and the days were very monotonous. She said, "Now my mother likes to watch TV news, and like young people, she likes to 'watch' short videos on her mobile phone." ”
Source: Xinhua News Agency client, "Reference News", Yunnan release