Villagers taste sweet melons harvested from a field in Kara Yar Village, Kashgar Prefecture, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (COURTESY PHOTO)

What do naan bread, paintings drawn with soldering irons, exquisite handmade tamburas, elaborately embroidered garments, edible fungi, raisins, melons and home-baked cakes have in common? They were on display at the sixth China-Eurasia Expo held in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on August 30 and September 1. They also shared a common origin: They were all products of poverty alleviation programs in Xinjiang.

In recent years, Xinjiang has launched many targeted anti-poverty programs. In 2017, 317,400 people in Xinjiang were lifted out of poverty, and 331 villages and three counties were taken off the poverty list. The poverty incidence rate dropped from 15.5 percent in 2016 to 12.6 percent, according to the autonomous region's poverty alleviation and development office.

Since 2014, government organs, state-owned enterprises and public institutions in Xinjiang have sent task groups to villages and communities to help local residents eliminate poverty, improve infrastructure and strengthen cultural and educational work. With the help of these groups, many achievements have been made.

Bread earners

May Yi Village in Artux City had 406 poor households, accounting for 47.7 percent of the population before a rural cooperative specializing in baking naan was set up in the village in March.

The cooperative employed 25 poverty-stricken people, turning them into bread earners for their respective families, said Wang Xuanwei, the village head and member of a poverty reduction group. "Now we produce 4,500-6,000 pieces of naan every day. Employees can make 3,000 yuan ($433) a month on average," he said.

Naan, the size of basins produced by the cooperative, is particularly impressive. Every bread in a batch bears a different Chinese character at its center, and together they spell out "ethnic unity." In addition to these large ones, the cooperative produces naan of various sizes.

They are not only sold locally. The cooperative brought their naan to the sixth China-Eurasia Expo, where it reached agreements with companies in other Xinjiang cities such as Urumqi and Changji, and provinces such as Guangdong and Shaanxi to ship the bread to them by air to meet market demands.

Naan baked by a rural cooperative in Mayi Village, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, sells at the sixth China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi on August 30 (WANG HAIRONG)

Golden eggs

Standing beside a basket holding two huge yellow melons, Wang Peng, an official with the General Office of the Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, told Beijing Review during the expo that the highly sweet fruit has become a significant source of income for growers.

A photo behind him showed the large egg-shaped melons at harvest, freshly plucked from their vines and piled in the fields in Kara Yar Village in Kashgar Prefecture, ready to be shipped out to market.

Wang said that when he was sent to the village as part of a poverty alleviation group in March 2017, the villagers mainly made a living from growing wheat and corn, earning a meager income. While trying to figure out a way out of poverty, the group found that the village, which lies near the edge of the vast Taklimakan Desert and has abundant sunshine and a big day-and-night temperature variance, is particularly favorable for growing melons.

The group consulted with agricultural experts, who recommended a melon variety nicknamed the Golden Phoenix, which is known as being fast-maturing and disease resistant.

After receiving training from the experts, five households planted the fruit in 1.3 hectares. Although disease reduced the expected yield by two thirds, they still made more money than when they planted corn.

This year, 20 households planted 6.7 hectares of the melon, which are expected to generate an income of nearly 550,000 yuan ($79,375), enough to lift them out of poverty.

As ways to enrich local farmers are explored, plant species not indigenous to Xinjiang have been introduced into the region, such as black edible fungi. The fungus, literally meaning "black wood ears," is a common ingredient in Chinese dishes prized for its medical value such as resisting blood coagulation and lowering blood lipids.

Ayagesa Village in Hotan Prefecture has 16 greenhouses for growing the fungi, one plant for producing fungi bags and a workshop for packaging dried fungi. Thirty poverty-stricken households are engaged in the business and can produce about 15 tons of fungi annually.

"The weather is suitable for the cultivation of black edible fungi in Xinjiang," Huang Xiong, an official with the Food and Drug Administration of Xinjiang, told Beijing Review. "Trial cultivation started last winter and mass production began in the spring. A technician from Mudanjiang City in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast was invited to the village to provide technical assistance." He said that it took fungi, sown onto the sawdust of walnut and apricot trees, six months to ripen. The first batch weighed 5 tons and procured impressive profits.

Photos of the production process displayed at the expo showed the fungi growing in rows of cylinder-shaped white fungi bags with ventilating holes. The white bags are neatly arrayed on the floor of greenhouses. After they ripen, they are picked and dried on shelves.

Zhang Shufang, a resident in Urumqi, bought several bags of edible black fungi from Ayagesa's booth at the expo. She said that she eats black edible fungi every other day because she believes that it can clear impurities in the blood.

Multi-pronged assistance

There were more than 100 booths set up for the first time at the sixth China-Eurasia Expo to showcase Xinjiang's achievements in eliminating poverty.

Since 2014, the State Grid Xinjiang Electric Power Co. Ltd. has sent four poverty alleviation groups to Cele County in Hotan.

The company has also installed solar power generation equipment, street lamps and electric heating systems for the villages receiving its help.

Its poverty reduction groups help villagers develop modern green agriculture, such as planting jujube trees, processing walnuts into oil and making rose jelly, which is improving the quality and value of agricultural products. The income from the projects is either distributed among villagers or reinvested to expand production.

They also organize job fairs, recruit people to do jobs such as picking cotton in rural cooperatives and deliver training by, for instance, inviting vocational school teachers to train villagers in welding and other skills.

Efforts have also been made to improve villagers' living and production conditions. For example, the anti-poverty workers help villagers replace their adobe beds with modern wood beds. They teach villagers to improve their quality of life by growing vegetables and cash crops, instead of just letting grass and trees grow in their yards. They also open charity supermarkets and donate clothes to villagers.

During the expo, deals were signed to sell the products of Xinjiang's poverty alleviation programs to other markets at home and abroad, generating more income for producers and proving to be a successful means of highlighting the region's advancements.