I expected to rough it when we visited the Lisu people in West Yunnan, one of China’s poorest regions, on the very borders of China and Myanmar. Imagine my surprise to find our hotel was a Hilton. When I drove through Yunnan in 1994 on my way home from Tibet, I doubted the entire province had a 5-star hotel, and now even the Lisu have one!

I was delighted by the hotel’s enthusiastic greeting as we passed between two rows of colorfully costumed Lisu who danced, sang and played the four-stringed Lisu lutes and bamboo Jew’s harps. Such a welcome! I had no idea they knew we were coming. As it turned out, they didn’t know we were coming. The greeting was for two busloads of Chinese and foreign competitors for the 2019 International Kayaking World Cup on the mighty Salween River, which plunges 1,749 miles from the heights of Tibet into the Indian Ocean.

Planet’s Most Musical Minority

A half dozen Lisu youth in the hotel lobby played guitars and sang in the beautiful harmony that has captivated audiences the world over, especially since the Lisu “Christian Choir of Mongkuan County” took a special award in Beijing at the International Choral Festival in 2006. Only recently has the world been able to enjoy the magic of Lisu music, thanks to highways that have ended the ancient isolation and eradicated some of the worst poverty in China and heritage protection programs that include village workshops and Lisu music classes in middle schools (much like a very young Xi Jinping encouraged 30 years ago for our Fujian Province’s She people).

Like many ethnic groups, until recently the Lisu had no written language so they used songs to carry on their epic traditions and tales, but unlike any other peoples on the planet, they also used music to settle conflicts. The opposing parties sang back and forth at each other while a judge sang out his opinion to the enthralled crowds. These musical battles often went on for days until either a decision was made or they simply collapsed from exhaustion.

I’ve longed to hear live Lisu music for decades, so I was excited to learn that my hosts in a remote mountain village had planned a traditional performance the next day. I even joined the band and played a Lisu flute (but very quietly; no point adding a bit of hell to such heavenly music).

As I checked out of the Hilton early the next morning, TV reporters asked to interview me. They quickly lost interest when they found I wasn’t a kayaker but I’m certain the stories I was to hear were far more exciting than anything the reporters got from the sports teams. I also met passionate anti-poverty team leaders who frankly divulged both successes and failures. I heard the stories of unforgettable villagers like the 33-year-old Lisu farm girl who rose from poverty to become a businesswoman driving a BMW. She shared her story while her family prepared a festive meal on the rooftop. I could see why James Fraser, who 100 years ago helped invent the Lisu script, said that the beauty of these mountains rivaled that of his beloved Swiss Alps.

I’d wanted to visit the Lisu when I drove through West Yunnan in 1994 on my way back from Tibet, but the roads were not much better in 1994 than a century earlier when the Lisu crossed the river on zip lines, and James Fraser, a veteran mountaineer, spent four days hiking the 44 miles from Tuofeng to Baoshan. Fraser’s daughter wrote of her father’s trek, “He was going on foot because no mule could negotiate the steep inclines or ford the torrents of the Salween River.”

I was thankful that today the trip was a two hour drive instead of a four-day hike like the one that Fraser described in his journal:

Such a magnificent view, wide and sweeping, made me pause awhile to take it in – range upon range of dark mountains swathed in cloud, and in the far distance the forbidding mass of the Salween Divide barring the way like a solid wall. Down, down, down, every now and again stopping to take in the grandeur of the scene until almost sundown when we reached the Lisu village of Shui Chen, wet, bedraggled and weary.

Fraser was enthralled by Yunnan’s beauty but even more captivated by the Lisu, whom he first encountered in a Tengyue Chinese market:

You could hardly miss them. They wore turbans, ornamental sashes, and white leggings. The women wore colorful costumes ornamented with shells and beads.

But when Fraser tried speaking to them in Chinese, he found “they didn’t understand a single word.” Many called Lisu the “monkey people” because they did not speak Chinese and lived in remote hillside bamboo huts. Their prowess with the bow was legendary; youth would shoot apples off their girlfriends’ heads just for sport. But in spite of their hunting skills and subsistence agriculture, they still barely managed to survive. Even into the twenty-first century, over 71% were impoverished, and many died young from easily treatable injuries or illness.

In 2012, Yunnan Province formulated its “Overall Plan for Poverty Alleviation in Nujiang Prefecture (2013-2017)”, and in October 2016, Nujiang set its goal even higher with its “Comprehensive Well-off Action Plan for Fighting against Poverty in Nujiang Prefecture”. The changes I’d see only three years later were astonishing.

In 2019, as we drove up the “Meili (Beautiful) Highway” high above the Salween River, we saw miles of new apartment complexes, replete with solar lights and water heating, that the government had given Lisu for free to help them escape hazardous and short-lived lives in the inhospitable mountains. The change was possible, of course, because of the tremendous investments in funds and manpower made by the government at all levels, but as Chinese leaders learned in the 1980s, money alone can’t fix the problem, and if not careful, aid can create dependency. The key to lifting the Lisu from poverty was not simply pouring money into the problem but sending passionate leaders who volunteered to leave careers and families for three years at a time to live and work with the poor they served.

But many of these leaders were shocked when they arrived with grand, good-intentioned goals only to discover that many Lisu were content to remain in poverty, and even fatalistically accept their children’s diseases and early deaths, because they had never known anything else. So more important than mere economic aid was the change in the Lisu’s attitudes. The Chinese volunteers’ passion and perseverance opened their eyes and gave the Lisu the vision and courage to help lift themselves from poverty.

Axing the Doors

Fugong County’s Public Relations Chief Guo Jianwen was animated as he shared successes and failures. Given their short, difficult lives on the mountains, Guo had expected Lisu to jump at the chance for free new homes in the valley, but many of them didn’t want homes, jobs or education—or money!

“Many people didn’t even want money,” Mr. Guo said, “because they didn’t see the use for it. Money was useless on the mountainsides where Lisu grew or made everything they used. Only rarely did they descend to the valley floor to sell a chicken for a sack of salt.” Before concrete roads were built up the vertical precipices even to remote villages, some people spent their entire life, cradle to grave, on the mountains, never descending once.

“They had a heartfelt fear of leaving their mountains!” Mr. Guo said, “so we said, ‘Just try it for a while. If you really don’t like it, then you can return to the mountain. After all, the mountain land will still be yours.’” Guo grinned. “Not one Lisu who tried life down below ever returned to the mountaintop. After all, everyone wants to live a good life.” But Guo never imagined what would happen next.

Mr. Guo knew that many Lisu were illiterate and could not speak standard Chinese, but he never imagined that they’d never seen a key. “One village had 320 households with new apartments. Within half a year, we had to replace doors and locks for 120 households. They had no idea how to use the keys so they chopped the doors down with an axe.”

Since then, they are careful to teach Lisu how to use keys, electricity, and appliances.

“We don’t just give them keys to a new house but everything else to make them as comfortable as possible because they are completely unused to life in the valley,” Guo said. “We felt we’d done well when we even bought them sofas, curtains and quilts, but they complained they had no firewood like on the mountains to keep warm, so we went out and bought extra quilts.”

“Our officials in the village have no rest days,” Guo said. “Some of us only see our family once or twice a year. We’re like nannies.” Guo sighed. “I did not care for my own parents as well as we do the Lisu.”

In addition to free homes, the Lisu were given vocational training and jobs, and many agreed to work in Zhuhai for over 3,000 Yuan per month. With a 10,000 Yuan government subsidy tacked on, they can earn 50,000 Yuan a year. “A family of six working in Zhuhai can earn 20,000 Yuan a month,” Guo said.

But Guo’s biggest bugbear was education. “No schooling, no future!” he said, but many feared that if their children got an education, they’d leave home and then they’d have no one to care for them in their old age. And even the children themselves saw no practical use for an education. Guo said, “To get children to attend school, we had to go to their homes to get them! And they’d be in school one day and run away the next. So we had to bring the children down from the mountains one by one, buy them school bags, clothes, shoes, and take them to school – and even then some would sneak back to the mountain as soon as we’d left them at the school, and we’d have to go get them again.

“We had one student who dropped out of school so he could work in Jiangxi,” Guo said. “We spent 25,000 Yuan to fly two officials to Jiangxi to track him down and persuade him to return. Other youth went to Tibet, and so we followed them to Tibet. We had no choice because Xi Jinping said, ‘No child left behind.’ So no matter where they went or how much it cost, we had to get them back!”

Some students who moved to Yuanjiang County in south central Yunnan flatly refused to return, so Guo contacted Yuanjiang County officials and arranged for the students to study there. “We give them a small stipend and phone once a week to confirm they’re still studying,” Guo said. “If we lose contact, we send someone to check up on them. If they don’t study, we are held accountable, so we can’t let one student drop out.”

In spite of frustrations, Guo was enthusiastic about the successes already under their belt, and happy to have colleagues like Duan Jiazheng, who is first secretary of the Party branch of Zanli Village and just as passionate as Guo about ending poverty.

Passionate Barefoot First Secretary

Like many other first secretaries across China, Duan put on hold a very promising and lucrative career to leave his family for a three-year stint fighting poverty. As soon as he’d graduated from college, he had risen rapidly in the ranks from agricultural technician to director of agriculture, director of supply and marketing cooperatives and director of development and reform.

“How on earth did you end up here?” I asked, “when you had such a future ahead of you?”

Duan smiled. “I was born in a peasant family, so I am passionate about poverty alleviation.” In 2015, he visited Zanli Village to understand the causes of poverty and wrote a report for the leadership, who set up a poverty alleviation office for Duan. “This was the first time a state-owned company set up such an office,” Duan said.

When Duan first arrived, 68.9% of the people were below the poverty line, so he and his team visited each household to understand their situation and determine the best approach. Today, 100% of Zanli Village’s 150 households and 583 people are above the poverty line. “We left no one behind,” Duan said proudly.

While working at the Agricultural Bureau, Duan had negotiated a loan with the World Bank and British government, so he used his rich experience with farmers, business and government to fight poverty through business. Duan set up a company as a poverty alleviation platform, as well as an agricultural coop and a pig farm. Villagers were dismayed when their pigs were slaughtered during the swine fever epidemic, but Duan rebounded rapidly and led them to raise over 86,000 chickens. “Each registered family was given five chickens per capita,” Duan said, “and 4 kg of feed for each chicken.”

After the swine fever disaster, Duan was careful to avoid putting too many of Zanli Village’s eggs in one basket. The village now has, per capita, 5 acres of grass and fruit, 1 acre of tea and 2 acres of walnuts. He has also promoted industry support with grass and fruit processing plants. “We must shift from public welfare to marketization,” Duan said. “In the past, we used ‘blood transfusion’ to help the poor, and everything was directly given to the people. Now we have a ‘point system management’ that benefits those who work.”

“Zanli villagers’ thinking has changed greatly over these four years,” Duan said. For example, they used to think that bathing was harmful to the body. Now when we visit homes, they are clean, with clothes hung neatly and quilts stacked.

“Our 81 Lisu forest rangers used to destroy the mountains with slash and burn agriculture or chopping firewood. Now they are paid to protect the forests and wildlife, and our forest coverage is over 85%. If we want to turn ecological advantages into economic advantages, we must protect the environment. This is the basis of our development.”

Duan has also promoted infrastructure. “It used to be expensive to build a house because there were no roads to transport building materials, and it was expensive to get produce and products to markets. In 2016, we had 147 landslides. Now, every person in our village has access to roads.”

Duan is also proud of the free houses they’ve given Lisu. Not only are they safe, and clean, but the Lisu are delighted that, like homes for other minorities around the country, they have elements of traditional tribal architecture.

Like Guo Jianwen, Duan was also frustrated with youth who did not want to study. A decade ago, many youth dropped out of school—even elementary school—but Duan no longer has a dropout problem. Fugong County gives one million Yuan yearly to help cover tuition and an 800 Yuan monthly living allowance for poor students who have passed the college entrance exam. “We tell them, ‘Knowledge makes the future.’ Today, Zanli Village has 234 students, including nine college students and 27 middle school students. Most are elementary school students. I think the change is huge.”

Duan smiled, happy with his village’s achievements. “We are all from the countryside and we are all farmers. We have responsibilities and feelings. We are rural people and have deep roots. There is no reason why we should not do a good job in fighting poverty. General Secretary Xi said that we cannot leave our minority groups behind, or allow any to remain in poverty. Although we may only be a village or a family, we are really doing practical things and benefiting the common people.”

Mr. Zhao Yu: A Minority First Secretary

I was excited to learn of minority first secretaries like Mr. Zhao Yu, Chishadi Village’s first secretary. A Bai ethnic member with a master’s degree, he volunteered in February 2017, to help the Lisu and was sent to Lumadeng Township and then to Chishadi Village.

Zhao Yu was so dismayed by the Lisu’s endemic poverty that he immediately conducted numerous in-depth surveys and met with many Lisu to better understand their problems. He learned that the cause of Lisu poverty was not just economy but also psychology, with villagers waiting idly for aid and lacking the energy or courage to tackle poverty themselves. Zhao addressed this problem with a heavy emphasis on education and motivation.

Chisadi’s impoverished farmers relied mainly on raising pigs and planting tea, grass and walnuts and by the end of 2017, 302 people of 80 households had been lifted from poverty, and another 339 people followed in 2018. Zhao Yu saw that, like most other impoverished areas, Chisadi’s poverty was rooted in poor infrastructure, over reliance on subsistence agriculture, and illiteracy and lack of education which prevented the people from getting vocational training and better jobs. These problems were beyond Zhao’s ability to solve so he asked the government for help.

Many farmers the world over are trapped in poverty because they sell their agricultural products by the ton as cheap commodities with middlemen making about 88% of the profits. But Zhao Yu helped Chisadi villagers recover some of these profits in April, 2018 when he helped acquire thirty acres of tea plantations and tea processing plants worth 1 million Yuan. The 21 households who formed a collective to pick and process the tea each earned over 40,000 Yuan, which was far more than they had earned selling unprocessed tea.

In 2017, Chisadi Village’s total income was 11.35 million Yuan, with farmers’ per capita net income exceeding 6,200 yuan, an increase of 600 Yuan per capita over 2016. The village’s investments are now quite diversified with over 4,530 acres of grass and fruits, producing 2.4 million Yuan annually, 3,450 acres of walnuts, 20 acres of camellia, 98 acres of peppercorns, as well as 2,400 acres of tea that generate 2.5 million Yuan annually. They’ve also built 350 beehives and Zhao Yu trained several hundred people in everything from construction and livestock breeding to domestic services and the manufacture of fine tea cakes to sell with their increasingly famous black tea.

In July, 2019, Chisadi opened a supermarket and five small scale industries. As a minority himself, Zhao Yu was keen on understanding Lisu folk customs. As Xi Jinping had shown with Fujian’s She minority in the late 1980s, and later the Miao and other minorities, ethnic culture, crafts and practices can often be used to create a niche in tourism and manufacturing, so Zhao led the villagers to start four cooperatives that gave three months training to 48 people to produce ethnic apparel.

In keeping with national guidelines, Zhao was careful that development did not come at the expense of the environment. To protect the forests, the government has invested in “electric firewood”, including 269,100 Yuan on 69 solar water heaters, and has employed eight villagers as forest rangers.

Not surprisingly, Chisadi villagers have come to love First Secretary Zhao Yu as one of their own—especially after he saved one of their children. On December 6, 2018, Zhao Yu discovered that a man’s two-year-old grandson, You Deng, had a fractured thigh that had not been reset for ten days, and the badly infected injury was being treated by a rural herbalist. The family had no money for medical treatment so Zhao Yu gave the father 500 Yuan of his own and urged him to have the child treated in the hospital. The child was saved.

Given these first secretaries’ passion and compassion, it is no wonder that they have won the respect, trust and love of the Lisu who only three years ago were the “poorest of the poor” but today are beginning to prosper—Lisu like the farm girl turned-business lady Miss Hu Xiuhua.

Entrepreneurial Miss Hu Xiuhua

Miss Hu Xiuhua, a 33-year-old entrepreneur, shyly showed us around her childhood thatched home with its central fire pit around which the family gathered in the evenings. Today, she has a new, modern home with wall-mounted TV and modern appliances, and drives a BMW up the winding narrow concrete road to her remote village.

Xiuhua is proof that Xi Jinping’s emphasis on cultivating self-reliance is the most farsighted approach. Although Xiuhua faced her share of heartaches and failures, today she’s confident in the future for herself and her village.

A native of Fugong County’s Zhuminglin Village, Xiuhua’s parents are typical farmers whose harvests were never enough to meet the family’s need for food and clothing. As a child, Xiuhua dropped out of school to help her family. For over ten years, she tried her hand at everything from selling vegetables and agricultural products to mixing concrete at construction sites. When she was in her twenties, her diligence and persistence caught the attention of Heng Lipu, first secretary of Minghu Village, who encouraged her to build upon her experiences. Ms. Hu started an engineering project, mixing sand and cement herself to learn the basics of construction. By 2014, Xiuhua had contracted some small projects on her own, but profits were low, the work difficult, and she was often embarrassed when she could not pay workers on time. She almost gave up several times, but in late 2018, just as she was about to call it quits, she had a providential encounter with Li Changzhi, who was in charge of the Third Aviation Bureau of China Communications Group Corporation. Li was so impressed by a retaining wall that Xiuhua had built on the Meili Highway that she invited Xiuhua to work with her group, but Xiuhua was leery, given her previous setbacks and failure to pay her workers on time.

“Don’t worry,” Li Changzhi told her. “We will pay on time, and you can always pay your workers on time.”

The pledge of always being able to pay her workers on time caught Xiuhua’s attention, but she was still anxious and unconvinced. Li Changzhi said: “The village leaders and I must have gone to her home at least 10 times to convince her. We want to help the poor,” Li said. “I will not lie to you!”

Xiuhua finally agreed to take her first plane trip to see an expressway construction site. Xiuhua was astonished at the scale of construction and the professional equipment, but also intimidated. She had experience only in small projects, and also worried her team would not leave their valley.

“I’ll arrange a 2,000 squ. m retaining wall as a test,” Li Changzhi said, “and you can see how you do.” Xiuhua was still conflicted, but in her heart she thought, “This company really cares about us. I can’t let the leaders down. I have to at least give it a try.”

When Xiuhua showed up at the construction site with her team of farmers, she was relieved that no one ridiculed her. In fact, the experienced contractor embraced her, and the shy country girl did not hesitate in asking for advice. Everyone chipped into give direction and support, and her team grew from nine to over 40. She won the contractor’s trust and respect by finishing the test project within a month. But what really excited her was that she could pay even the lowest skilled workers over 4,000 Yuan per month and over 7,500 Yuan monthly to staff—and never once were wages in arrears.

Xiuhua was delighted, but First Secretary Heng was not about to let the newly rich farm girl rest on her laurels. “You are doing well,” she told Xiuhua, “but you need to help more villagers broaden their horizon, prosper, and help eradicate poverty.”

Secretary Heng helped develop village labor export policies with subsidies to ensure stable employment and adequate pay. Xiuhua and her fellow villagers were prospering within a year, and she bought her first car—a BMW. Today, she is outwardly rich but inwardly she’s still the same, shy country girl. Every time she returns home, she helps her parents with farm work and visits the village’s elderly. She’s quick to help anyone who is sick or disabled, or unable to go to school. A school dropout herself, she says, “I don’t want any child to have to drop out of school.”

Xiuhua’s fellow villagers are proud of her, but she is quick to point out that without the guidance, encouragement and support of village leaders, she’d have never dared leave her Salween Valley. Today, she says, “I hope to use my personal energy and blog power to help more people in need.”

Ecological Lisu

My visit to Lisu land ended all too quickly. I could have spent a month exploring Yunnan’s innovative anti-poverty program, especially its ecological initiatives. Only a decade ago, for example, Lisu were contributing to deforestation and erosion by their slash and burn agriculture and use of trees for fuel. Today, 13,889 are employed as ecological forest rangers, 2,279 are geological disaster monitoring managers, 1793 are river course managers, and 891 are border guards. The post of ecological forest ranger alone has increased the income of 48,800 people—fully 30% of the poor population.

The sheer comprehensiveness of the Lisu development programs is mind-boggling, but over the decades, I’ve driven over 200,000 km around China and seen the same determination in every corner of the country. The more I see and learn, the more I think these invaluable anti-poverty lessons should not be wasted but compiled in manuals to help fight poverty not only in China but also in many countries already benefiting from Xi Jinping’s BRI.

But reproducing strategies is one thing, reproducing the spirit behind them is another. I cannot imagine other countries’ bureaucrats fighting poverty with as much passion and perseverance as China’s first secretaries. It’s the age-old Chinese spirit that has kept the dream of ending poverty since Liberation in 1949. This ancient yet forward-looking spirit is embodied in Chinese I’ve met all over the country, from leaders to farmers in their fields. But as Walt Whitman wrote, quite often the best is right at home—people like my friend, XMU security officer Zhou Dexin, whom I discovered I really did not know at all.

Just as my summer drive was ending, I read in the news that for the past several years, Mr. Zhou had been safeguarding the campus by day while studying by night to get his university degree, finally graduating at age 53.

I’ve never met a man so driven as Mr. Zhou, and I asked him what moved him to get a degree in law. Surprisingly, his inspiration was an Indian movie about injustice that he saw as a child.

I look forward to people in other nations being inspired by a Chinese movie!