Sina Dingzhu, a Tibetan man aged 51, live in Jiangpo Village in Deqin County, northwest Yunnan’s Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. With the Meili Snow Mountain sitting opposite and the Lancang River rushing through, the village is endowed with scenic beauty. However, it used to be cut off from the outside world, and villagers were impoverished.

To increase their income, local villagers have grown olives and raised yak and goats in recent years. And they also tried to develop rural tourism, but the village is not visited by many due to limitations in transport and lodging.

In 2017, some businesspeople from Guangdong province came to visit the village. And in the following year, they joined hands with locals in developing the Xueda lake at the foot of the Meili Snow Mountain.

They built holiday hotels, set up home stay inns and offer meals cooked from organic food materials industries. In inviting in more tourists, the Guangdong-funded company gives half of its revenues to villagers, with a yearly 10,000 yuan allocated to each household. 

Sina Dingzhu was keenly aware of the business opportunities, taking the lead in running a home stay inn and thus making a difference among fellow villagers. Sina Dingzhu, who had lived on farming and selling Xuanzi (a three-stringed plucked instrument), increased his income to 100,000 yuan last year.

Seeing is believing. Led by Snading, more villagers began to build Tibetan-style home-stay inns. So far, the main works have basically completed, and the home stays will be put to service within 2020.

Thanks to breeding and rural tourism, the per capita income in Jiangpo increased from 8,000 yuan in 2016 to 26,600 yuan in 2019. The towering Meili Snow Mountain, which stands across from the village, witnessed the dramatic changes in the lives of the Tibetan villagers.

Reporting by Hu Chao (Xinhua); trans-editing by Wang Shixue