In pics: villagers from China’s “most uninhabitable place” enjoy themselves at street market in Ningxia

Residents select fresh fruits at a street market in Yuanlong Village of Minning Township, Yongning County, Yinchuan, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on July 8, 2022. (People’s Daily Online/Zhong Wenxing)

Minning, a portmanteau out of the abbreviations for the coastal province of Fujian Province and northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, is a model town that reflects China's east-west poverty alleviation collaboration and pairing assistance program.

Most villagers in Minning are resettled farmers from Xihaigu, an arid patch of land in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, once labeled the “most unfit place for human settlement” by visiting experts from the United Nations in the 1970s, where residents would often suffer severely from drought and fragile ecological conditions.

People buy local seasonal vegetables at a street market in Yuanlong Village of Minning Township, Yongning County, Yinchuan, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on July 8, 2022. (People’s Daily Online/Ebulayi)

Over the past 24 years, around 66,000 residents from deep in the mountains have triumphed over poverty after their relocation to Minning township. The per capita disposable income of farmers in the town stood at about 16,098 yuan in 2021, which has risen over 32-fold over the years. Currently, the grape wine industry, mushroom farming industry and solar photovoltaic energy generation industry are booming and promoting the local economy.

Minning was named by President Xi Jinping in 1997, then deputy secretary of east China’s Fujian Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), who was in charge of a “pairing-up” poverty alleviation program between Fujian and Ningxia. Xi pushed for a relocation project, which would see whole communities from Xihaigu move from their barren, inhospitable ancestral lands to a new area at the foot of the Helan Mountain nourished by the Yellow River.

People try hats at a street market in Yuanlong Village of Minning Township, Yongning County, Yinchuan, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on July 8, 2022. (People’s Daily Online/Zhong Wenxing)

Residents leave the street market after purchasing some items in Yuanlong Village of Minning Township, Yongning County, Yinchuan, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on July 8, 2022. (People’s Daily Online/Zhong Wenxing)