Guizhou village turns rocky land into orchards

Right now, the rocky mountainsides surrounding Xipu Village in southwest China's Guizhou Province are filled with the fragrance of fruit. Stretching for kilometers in every direction, golden-red Jinxiang mandarins hang heavy on the branches like clusters of lanterns.

The transformation of Xipu Village is not an overnight success but a practical example of rural revitalization. Back in the 1990s, the village was covered with jagged, rocky mountain slopes, lacking water, and with fragmented land, making traditional farming extremely difficult. With the support of local authorities, the villagers began planting fruit trees on the rocky mountainsides to control desertification and improve fruit yields. Through trial and error, they developed a desertification control model by constructing roads and water pools to connect scattered orchards and create large-scale fruit-planting areas. This model was effective in improving the local ecology and environment, laying the groundwork for rural revitalization and providing villagers with a stable income.

Through their efforts to control desertification and improve the variety of fruits, Xipu Village has upgraded 2,000 mu (about 133 hectares) of fruit trees, bringing the total fruit planting area to 3,500 mu (around 233 hectares).