Shaanxi villagers enjoying the fruits of their labors

Cultivation and sales of winter jujube have raised incomes and living standards, and prompted young people to return. Yang Yang reports.

Editor's note: Since China eradicated absolute poverty, the nation is now on the track to achieve common prosperity. China Daily reporters have been to the countryside to explore how local specialty industries are helping people prosper.

Over the past 23 years, Xiaopo, a village in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, has been transformed from one of the country's most poverty-stricken places into a modern production base for winter jujube fruit.

The village, in Dali county, Weinan city, is located on the west bank of the Yellow River. Between 1966 and 1968, floodwaters from the river turned Xiapo's 1,000 hectares of fertile land into saline-alkali soil.

In the three decades that followed, people struggled with the farmland but the harvests were poor. A popular description in the 1990s noted: "The field looks like the surface of water from afar, but take a closer look and one will find the surface is actually alkali. Nothing grows out of it and the people are so poor."

From 1995 to 1997, the average per capita income in the village was just 480 yuan a year, according to official statistics.

However, in 1998, Xue Anquan, was elected chief of the village branch of the Communist Party of China at the age of 43.

After conducting research and surveys, he decided to trial the planting of alkali-tolerant jujube, aka Chinese dates. In 2001, he used 200,000 yuan of funding to buy 180,000 jujube tree seedlings, which he distributed among the villagers free of charge to promote experimental cultivation.

Initially, no one took up the offer, so 23 CPC members in the village each took responsibility to plant jujube seedlings on 0.67 hectares of land, while Xue took on more than 13.3 hectares. With much care, most of the seedlings survived.

The key was finding sufficient water to lower the level of alkalinity in the soil, Xue said. So, to ensure that the seedlings could drink "sweet water" rather than the "brinish water" underground, he used 10 tricycles a day to transport the liquid from a source 3 kilometers away.

In 2004, the village invested more than 3 million yuan to build more than 20 km of canals, diverting water from the nearby river to feed the fields and solve the watering problem for good.

Change of focus

However, as the jujube trees bore fruit four years later, Xue found that selling the produce at 0.6 yuan per kilogram meant they sold for just 20 percent of the price of winter jujube, which also tasted much better. In the following years, he sought to boost sales by grafting winter jujube onto the original trees and building greenhouses to shelter the ripening fruit from frequent September storms that caused the crops to rot.

Since 2008, jujube planting in Xiaopo has expanded at a rate of 66.7 hectares per year, while the villagers have continued to keep pace with the times to maintain improved yields and sales.

In 2013, Xue introduced the Organic Winter Jujube Modern Technology Demonstration Park project to the village.

Within a year of opening, and with an investment of 40 million yuan, the project, which covers 666.7 hectares, had produced five new roads totaling 9 km, 66.7 hectares of interconnected greenhouses, a training center and a winter jujube cultural corridor.

In 2014, Xiaopo obtained an additional investment of 13 million yuan, building a winter jujube trading market and logistics center covering 2.67 hectares within the park. The center draws winter jujube merchants from all over the country, looking to buy local produce.

In 2015, Xiaopo built an e-commerce center to sell the fruit directly to customers nationwide. Now, the cultivation area for winter jujube in the village has been expanded to 1,000 hectares, with annual output value of 120 million yuan ($16.4 million), according to official statistics.

The village has also developed a range of related tourism projects such as gardens for fruit picking, cultural corridors, sightseeing minitrains, cultural exhibition parks and amusement parks for children.

The complete winter jujube industry chain has also prompted a growing number of young people who had previously worked outside the village to return home.

Xiaopo is one of nine villages in Dali where the combined annual income from winter jujube sales exceeds 100 million yuan.

Dali, formerly known as Tongzhou, is located in the eastern part of the Guanzhong Plain.

With a population of 600,000, and covering 1,800 square kilometers, Dali has 15 towns, and its winter jujube industry is the largest of its kind in China, generating annual revenue of 6.5 billion yuan.

Contact the writer at yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn