The aerial photo shows terraces, new houses as well as new road network of a village in Wusheng county, Guang’an, southwest China’s Sichuan province, March 16, 2019. (Photo: People’s Daily Online)

Southwestern China’s Chongqing municipality, putting great efforts on attracting talents in rural areas, witnessed huge improvement in its rural revitalization work in recent years.

Xiong Xiong, a young designer of Chongqing Planning and Design Institute, was one of the many that are attracted to work in the rural part of the municipality.

He is among the first batch of Chongqing’s “village designers”, and started working at Huashi village, Jindai township of Chongqing’s Liangping district since last June.

Xiong, born in the urban area, gave all of him to the village in the past 9 months, from village planning, to the renovation of local water supply and lavatories. Though he has caught the sun when working in the village, he is happy about what he has done. “It’s worthy to do what I can for the villagers,” Xiong said.

Talent is the key to revitalizing China's rural areas. By thoroughly implements the guidance of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chongqing takes talent construction as a priority for the work of rural revitalization. It not only attracts professionals from other regions of the country, but also nurtures talents of its own.

Guiding talents to the rural areas, Chongqing has created a powerful force to revitalize the countryside.

Making full use of related policies such as poverty alleviation, Chongqing attracted over 8,900 rural talents back to their hometown to lead the locals for entrepreneur projects.

Meanwhile, Chongqing carried out a series of trainings for the villagers, hoping to turn them into professional farmers, young ranch owners, and e-commerce talents. A batch of rural entrepreneurs are playing their due roles in the countryside.

Zhang Youhua is one of the returnees. He rented a 200-hectare farming land and established an ecological agriculture in his hometown Yongchuan district of Chongqing.

His business did not go well at the very beginning, as the sales dropped after a peak in August. It even became a headache for him when he settled account at the year end.

Fortunately, the agriculture committee of Yongchuan district recommended him to a training course, during which he received expert lectures and attended field investigations.

It largely broadened Zhang’s horizon. He built a workshop for processing lotus leaves, upgraded his ecological park, and made the park a base for tour study and research.

“Now I’m always kept busy by the business, and I have to recruit more villagers,” he said, adding that his gross income hit 20 million yuan last year.