Written by: Bai Jiali
Posted on: December 04, 2018 | 
| 中文
Residential Area of Daxi Village, Yuli County, Xinjiang
Daxi Village, Yuli County, South Xinjiang, China, is a model village in the frontier area, developed along the lines of reform and opening up. The villagers have found a way to prosper on the saline alkali land, with their per capita net income increasing 38 times, since the early 1990s. They are now living a life with “fatter wallets and richer culture.”
"Daxi" means “saline-alkali land” in Uyghur language, which properly describes the small village on the northeast edge of Taklamakan Desert. It used to be a village famous for relying on the grain that the state sold to them (because what they had produced was not enough for their consumption), depending on loans for production, and living on relief, with their yield of cotton per-mu only 20 kilos.
In the 1980s, Shawur Manglik, a senior high school graduate who had the capability to do accounting, was elected as the secretary of the village CPC branch. He led the villagers as they dug ditches to drain alkali and plant windbreak woods. Although saplings were blown away when sandstorms came, and the villagers had to replant four or five times a year, the harsh conditions gradually changed with their arduous efforts.
“At the beginning, the villagers were unwilling to do the work, because they thought that this would take up some of their arable land, but during the autumn harvest, they found that the output increased significantly,” said Shawur. Now, the 25,000-mu (about 1667 ha.) land in the village, is all sheltered by windbreaks. Rows of trees also make the village greener.
In addition to developing agriculture, the village also reclaimed wasteland and invested in building flour mills, brick factories, vegetable greenhouses, farmers’ markets, night markets, etc. The village's collective economy has grown from scratch.
In 1999, the officials of the village visited China’s richest village, Huaxi of Jiangsu Province, to seek experience. "At that time, their per capita income was tens of thousands of yuan, but ours was only thousands of yuan. There were a lot of things to learn,” said Shawur. The village head and his colleagues read newspapers and magazines, and repeatedly discussed the ways for change and development. "When I lied down on bed at night, and suddenly an idea of getting rich came up, I immediately got up to write it down in a notebook lying beside my bed. I have kept this habit until now."
Last year, the collective income of the village reached 2.3 million yuan, and the per capita income exceeded 30,000 yuan. 136 households have moved into villas and storied buildings. Natural gas pipelines and asphalt roads are neatly arranged in the village. Dripping irrigation is adopted for cotton growing, and machines for harvesting.
What increases is not only the income but also the happiness index. Since 1991, the village has formulated 18 villager-level preferential policies for education, medical care, pension and other subsidies, so that the villagers are now enjoying tangible benefits of collective economic income.
"Several years ago, many children of this village were able to go to college only because of this policy," said Li Peigang, who came from Guangyuan in Sichuan Province, to start his carpentry business in Daxi Village in his early years. Now, his children have all found good jobs, and part of their tuition fees came from the villager-preferential policies. Since 1991, 480 students from the village have been admitted to secondary schools and colleges.
The amount of preferential policy subsidies granted annually is clearly recorded on the public signboard at the village committee. The last paragraph on the sign reads: From 1991 to 2016, the total amount of preferential policy subsidies granted to villagers was 42.18 million yuan.
Daxi Village also explored a set of practical and effective "village rules and regulations,” which include a total of 36 articles and are updated once every three years. Shawur said that in the 1980s when the, "village rules and regulations" were formulated, the whole villagers spent two months discussing them, until everyone agreed and signed. Provisions, such as "no random felling of trees", "villagers should be honest and law-abiding", "villagers should manage their livestock well", are all written into the rules.
Li Peigang said that the Han villagers have experiences of growing cotton and managing vegetable greenhouses, whereas the Uygur villagers’ strength is raising cattle and sheep, so they have been learning from each other for long time.
Mutual help, like a golden key, opens the door for the villagers to become rich together. Liu Tao was once a village doctor. In 2013, she and her husband set up a farm stay in the village. She grew pears, grapes and peaches in the orchard behind the house, and hired Uygur chefs from the village to cook local food. The business of her farm stay has been good and it attracts many visitors from the town for leisure and vacation tours.
In order to encourage more entrepreneurs, Yuli County invested on building the "Daxi Ethnic Folklore Park,” which brought together the entrepreneurs in the village, setting up more farm stays, offering local special food and accommodation, to develop the local farm tourism. The villagers are ushering in a more prosperous period.
Translated by Xu Donglin
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