Vineyards help Ningxia villagers leave poverty behind

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On a summer afternoon in a fluorescent-lit winery in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Liu Li patiently explained wine making to visitors.

As the director of a plant at Chateau Lilan, the 38-year-old was familiar with every process of making a bottle of red wine and the sophisticated machines involved.

▲ Liu Li at Chateau Lilan

"We had never seen these machines before, nor did we know how to operate them. However, we were encouraged to learn skills in the winery despite our limited knowledge and ability," Liu said.

Before moving to Minning, where the winery is located, in 2013, Liu Li was an unemployed woman with two children in the impoverished Guyuan city in southern Ningxia. She took care of a small piece of land at home while her husband worked as a construction worker.

The family barely made ends meet with her husband's income. "We only escaped from starving," she said.

They were relocated to the capital city in northern Ningxia as local government made efforts to lift villagers out of poverty. From a vine worker to the plant director, Liu's salary has doubled in the past seven years, reaching 5,000 yuan ($472) a month, and grasped fresh skills. 

But Liu doesn't saw herself as a professional vintner as she learned these knowledge and techniques from training and practice at work.

"The winery provided women like me job opportunities, we got to earn money as well as learn skills," she said.

▲ Liu Li works in the vineyard of Chateau Lilan

Her husband was in charge of a vineyard covering 60 hectares, pruning, fertilizing, and scouting the growth of grapes in the fields. The couple working in the same business now encourages and supports each other. 

 "We not only turned the tide economically, but also mentally changed. He became an expert viticulturist and I learned wine making, so we both made progress by learning from each other," Liu said, adding that as their jobs became steady, the family bought a car in 2016 and began traveling around with their children.

Like Liu's family, 38-year-old Hai Fugui also resettled in Yongning county in Yinchuan eight years ago. In 2016, a tractor passing by his house attracted his attention.

As a car fanatic, Hai wondered what the tractor was for and learned from the driver about the farm work in the vineyard of Chateau Lilan. After training for a week, Hai became an official employee at the winery, driving the tractor to weed the field and inspect vines to ensure they remain free of pests.

Earning an average monthly salary of 5,500 yuan, Hai's income doubled compared with working as a foreman at a raspberry plant before he found the job at the winery.

"I love my work. I don't feel tired, just a little bit hot under the burning sun," Hai said. He bought his dream car in 2017 and sometimes rides his family of seven to travel nearby.

▲ Hai Fugui works in the vineyard of Chateau Lilan

The winery Liu and Hai work for is located in the east foothills of Helan Mountains. At 38 degree latitude, the narrow corridor between the Helan Mountains and the Yellow River is one of the golden strips for growing wine grapes in the world.

The mountains block the extreme cold from north and stop the sandstorm coming from the Gobi desert in Inner Mongolia while Yellow River irrigates this arid land which receives 200 millimeters of annual precipitation. 

The long sunshine in the region ensures the accumulation of sugar in grapes and widely varied temperature between day and night can better maintain acidity. Moreover, rich minerals in aerated soil give advantage to a steady grape yield.

Resonating with the philosophy that "great wine starts in the vineyard", vintners take the geographical advantage to invest in the promising industry, and meanwhile increase employment capacity for locals to shake off poverty.

Nearly a hundred wineries have been built in the region, with the area of vineyards covering 38,000 hectares, according to the local wine bureau.

Wine grower Wang Caixia has worked in the vineyard of Chateau Zhihui Yuanshi for over 10 years.

The 55-year-old earns 2,000 yuan a month by doing farm work, like plugging the soil and picking up grapes, with other vine workers in the 66.7 hectares of vineyard. "I can't leave the vineyard. Staying at home doing nothing is not comfortable. I'm really happy working here," Wang said.

▲ Wang Caixia works in the vineyard of Chateau Zhihui Yuanshi

For Wang, the wine making process made little sense but taking care of the most important raw material — grapes in the vineyard— has ensured her a plentiful and moderately prosperous life.

In 2013, Ningxia became the first region in China to introduce a winery classification system, which ranked wineries in five levels. By updating the rules and ranks every two years, the system, modeled on the Bordeaux 1855 Classification, evaluates the level of Ningxia wineries to boost production of high-quality wine.

In addition, Ningxia has established a wine bureau, the first in China, to manage the development of grape and wine industry. 

The bureau, or Administrative Committee of the Grape Industry Zone of Helan Mountain East Foothills, made policies and technical standards to regulate processes from seedlings import, management of vineyards, winery establishments, to wine making and marketing.

The wine industry provides 120,000 jobs every year and 28 percent of local farmers' income, which comes up to 900 million yuan, the bureau said.

Ma Yongming, an official with the wine bureau, said the Ningxia wine region expects to reach an annual output of 500 million bottles and provide jobs for 150,000 people by 2022. 

He also estimated that the region will receive at least one million tourists a year by then, building a wine tourism hub that can go toe-to-toe with the top wineries in the world. 

记者：赵伊梦  胡冬梅

图片：陈泽冰

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