Chinese anti-poverty TV drama well-received overseas

New life

It took just two weeks for Bai Xiyan to progress from a blind date to marriage in Xihaigu. She said she had no choice. She had only met her future husband three times by the time she was 22, and all meetings had been arranged by her parents.

In 2014, Bai's family was relocated to Minning town's Yuanlong village. There, unlike in the original Minning, houses, schools and hospitals had been built in advance. Bai's life changed there in 2019 when she and more than 50 rural women began to work in a new e-commerce poverty alleviation workshop.

In just one year, she became a manager and joined a livestreaming team to promote Ningxia's special agricultural products to audiences across the country, earning more than 3,000 yuan a month.

"The job not only offers me a stable income, it also brings confidence and dignity. More importantly, my 9-year-old daughter can live a different life," she said.

After moving out of the mountains, the children of Xihaigu gained access to better education. Scenes of students from different grades crowded into one classroom, which can be seen in the TV series, have in reality been a thing of the past.

At the school Bai's daughter attends, the green football field is often full of children and the classrooms are spacious and bright. Intelligent electronic screens installed in blackboards can link students in the town with their counterparts in Yinchuan, and even those in Beijing.

"My biggest dream is that my daughter will go to university and choose her life according to her desires," she said.