Sunshine road leads to village on top of mountains

The mountain road leads to Xiangyang village

Accompanied with the staff of Chenzhou Charity Federation, reporters paid visits to Xiangyang village, Ruchang County, Chenzhou city on November 6, 2012. It was amazed to find that the new mountain concrete road was built and leading to the small village on top of mountains and great changes happening to that small village with the help of new rural construction project.

To get richer, building roads first

Cadres of Chenzhou Civil Affairs Bureau in Xiangyang village revealed that Xiangyang is a typical poor mountain village with just 316 villagers. There are about 130 permanent residents in the village. In 2010, the average per capita income was 710 yuan and per capita food was just about 200kgs. The key narrow throat problem hindering in the way lies in its inconvenient traffic condition caused by the special geological environment.

The highest altitude of the village is about 1020 meters, which stopped villagers from going outside, and caused the high risk and cost to deliver woods, fruits and other products to other places. Improving the traffic condition became the top urgency for Xiangyang villagers. However, the poor village finance condition can’t afford this cost, so villagers can do nothing but only be anxious.

Finally, due to the support of cadres from Chenzhou Civil Affairs, 5.227 million yuan was collected to build a road for Xiangyang village and this road project was listed into Hunan “twelfth five-year plan”. This 10kms concrete road has been fulfilled with 4.225 million yuan investment in this October and opened to public.
Wu Zhichao- secretary of village party committee, is 62 years old now. He talked excitedly about the great changes brought by this road when reporters met him in the village committee.

All benefits from the road

Zhang Xiaoyan- a Shandong girl who married one Xiangyang villager. It was used to be a nightmare for her to go to the village in the earlier days, but now she can drive the motorcycle home. She is very happy that she can go with her children to visit her parents-in-law now and then.

The secretary of village party committee- Wu Zhichao said there was just one tractor in the village in the earlier days, and the cost for delivering one tractor of wood would be about 500-600 yuan, which was extremely high at that time. The villagers can only walk back with the fertilizers after selling some local specialties. But now, more villagers are willing to choose tractors and motorcycles as a result of the good condition roads, which greatly help to decrease the delivery cost.

Thanks to the road, villagers’ income increase sharply. The planting earnings of pepper, ginger, corn and others hit 100,000 yuan; the gaining of breeding industries like cow, bee, etc. amounted to 100,000 yuan; income of afforestation and fruits reached 50,000 and rice planting and other businesses achieved 100,000 yuan. The country's rural per capita income was up to 1424 yuan in 2012, which was two times of 2010.

The Chairman of Chenzhou Charity Federation- Yi Peikang visited the villagers many times for checking the detailed condition of the road and people’s real opinions. By working with Chenzhou Charity Federation, the cadres team of Xiangyang village helped to improve the village conditions with great efforts, like the establishment of rural reading rooms, reconstruction of public toilets, reformation of dangerous houses, etc.. Furthermore, 180 villagers overcame poverty with a rate of 80%.

Now, together with the road, Xiangyang village people are on the way to become more and more prosperous.