From a sleepy hole in the desert to a new town with modern comforts, the changes at Minning Town of Northwest China's Ningxia are beyond locals' wildest imagination, all thanks to China's poverty alleviation campaign.

A bird's-eye view of Minning Town. [Photo/cfp.cn]

In 1997, China promoted the pairing of the prosperous east coast region and Ningxia by sending experts from Fujian to help villagers in northwestern desert areas relocate and set up businesses. 

Minning was named by combining the short forms of the names of Fujian and Ningxia－Min and Ning. More than 60,000 villagers have resettled there, with their per capita disposable income increasing from 500 yuan at the beginning of the relocation project to nearly 15,000 yuan ($2,325) last year.

Fujian has dispatched 183 officials and around 2,000 experts in science and technology, education and medical care to Ningxia since the cooperation began 24 years ago, according to the regional government. A total of 3.37 billion yuan invested in the project has benefited 600,000 impoverished people.

But the process of poverty alleviation was full of challenges as many villagers resisted leaving the land where their ancestors had lived.

At the time, Wang Sheng was a grassroots official in charge of the relocation program.

"The local government tried full steam to motivate villagers to resettle, but only a third were willing to move at first," he said. "Some others, including my relatives, moved back after they found the new settlement was still a barren desert."

When the farmland and water infrastructure were remolded and the cooperation assisted the development of businesses such as growing mushrooms and breeding cattle, more villagers trusted the program and joined their peers in the north, he said.

The street scene of Minning Town. [Photo/cfp.cn]

Zhang Jun, deputy principal of Minning Central Primary School, was 11 years old when he moved with his parents from Xiji county in Guyuan on a tractor carrying food and all their belongings in 1995. "It wasn't easy to go to the city, let alone a place so far away. I felt excited during the trip," he told Nxnews, a local news portal.

His family was one of the first in his village to become better off by growing mushrooms under the instruction of agricultural experts from Fujian. Daunted by the scorching weather and ferocious mosquitoes, many villagers returned to their old adobe houses and sold their relocation quotas to others, Zhang said.

Although those who first relocated struggled at first, the choice was later proven correct as they altered their destiny.

"Without the help of the relocation program, I had no chance to enroll in college, even high school," he said.