Herbs are Yunnan village's prescription for a better life

Traditional Chinese medicines and cultures helping remedy endemic poverty

A once-struggling village in Yunnan province is improving its financial lot thanks to Chinese herbal medicines, and residents are also finding innovative ways of commercializing local traditions and culture.

The transformation began germinating five years ago when an official from the Tibetan ethnic group was sent to work in the village.

He Zhengguo, 40, is the Party secretary of Tongle in Yunnan's Diqing Tibetan autonomous prefecture. When he arrived at the Lisu ethnic community in 2013, the village was in dire poverty and had been seeing an exodus of young people for years.

When he saw that villagers earned little by growing wheat, corn and buckwheat in fields 2,000 meters above sea level - barely making ends meet despite government assistance - He made up his mind to try and turn things around.

"When I saw the villagers stricken by dire poverty, I thought to myself that now that I have come, I must do my share to improve villagers' lives," he said.

Upon arrival, he found that many locals had fallen into old habits of heavy drinking and playing mahjong late into the night, and would often sleep until noon the next day. "Farm work would go unfinished if their lifestyles persisted," He said.

To rouse villagers from their unproductive ways, the Party chief stopped using the village public broadcast system so as not to disturb seniors and children. Instead, He decided to go door-to-door to wake young people up, which initially led to some complaints.