"When I was a kid, my family struggled with poverty. We lived in a dilapidated cave house, where six of us slept on one kang (a traditional-style heated brick bed often seen in north China)," says Li. He was born in a poor village in Yan'an City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province. At the age of 16, he dropped out of school and became an apprentice to support his family with a small income. 

Heping Village, where Li lives, was a poverty-stricken village at the city level. As many as 60 households had fallen into poverty because of illness, disability, pressure from tuition fees or natural disasters. In 2016, during the implementation of targeted poverty alleviation, the government registered the poverty-stricken households, with Li and other poor families in the village included on the list. Thanks to the policy, the residents enjoy a reimbursement rate of more than 90 percent for their medical bills, a big relief of their financial burden.