Owner of a grocery store [Photo by Rao Chunyan]

From 2006 till now, 1,859 village groceries all over southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) have been built or refurbished, with a total of 42.318 million yuan invested by both China's central government and the regional government of TAR.

The project named 'Markets in hundreds of villages", initiated by the Ministry of Commerce, has benefitted thousands of villagers in the rural area of the region.

People enjoy their leisure in front of a grocery store.[Photo by Rao Chunyan]

With sufficient financial support, all the dilapidated, shabby and small shops have changed their faces and turned into clean and tidy groceries stores with varieties of affordable goods.

"The business is going well," Drolma, owner of a store told the reporter. "We can make around 1, 700 yuan per month." 

In the next five years, more farmers and herdsmen will benefit from this project with more sufficient goods supplies and accessible village markets. 

A village boy in Nyingchi eats his snacks at the door of a village grocery. [Photo by Rao Chunyan]