A view of terraced flower beds in Dongyue Village, Guangshan County, central China's Henan Province, in May 2022. [Photo by Du Qing]

Covering an area of 8.7 square kilometers, Dongyue is an administrative village of Wenshu Township in Guangshan County, central China's Henan Province. It has jurisdiction over 19 villager groups and 41 village communities, with a total of 592 households and 2,211 residents.

The village had long been part of the contiguous destitute area in the Dabie Mountains, with nearly one-third of the villagers living under the poverty line. People there had struggled to feed themselves; until 2018, the former state-level impoverished village managed to shake off destitution.

"We used to live in a shabby adobe house. Dust was everywhere whenever it got windy outside, and I couldn't even open my eyes," said villager Yu Yunyi, who serves at the village cultural center as an administrator showing visitors around. "Now, my family has moved to a newly built two-story building."

"We started to take a turn for the better by building roads. Poor traffic infrastructure was the Achilles heel of our village," said Yang Changjia, secretary of the Dongyue Village Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).