Editor's note: The Sichuan-Tibet Plateau, a beautiful region that reaches toward the heavens, is a place showered with blue skies, covered in white clouds, and dotted with snow-covered mountains, but recently, something truly remarkable has been materializing among the households that call this place home. A groundbreaking historic change has been reshaping the land and its people. From today on, we will publish a series of stories to tell you those changes. 

"I provide labor services at a Dege County construction site, and my wife often comes with me to cook. This house was actually built using the income we received there," Tashi, a villager from Yanda, says excitedly on December 26th of 2016 while decorating his new house. As he speaks to Gyama, the team leader of a sub-village, he says that in February earlier that year, he took the money he and his wife made and began to build this two-story house. After the traditional New Year, the two earned yet another 20 thousand yuan (3,026 US dollars) doing the same thing, and they used this to decorate their new house. Now, they hope to move in four more family members before this year's New Year arrives! Doing labor away from home is a new approach the support team has offered to lead the disadvantaged locals of Yanda Village out of poverty. 

In 2016, the support team organized laborers from poor families and sent them to Dege, Serxu, and Garze. Those villagers who were moderately literate were sent to make some crafts and plant local homegrown specialties, such as medicinal herbs and purple-skinned potatoes. The team hoped to broaden the channels available for local villagers to increase their incomes, and Yanda Village, as a result, was the first in the county to shed its "poor village" title, with the average per capita income managing to reach 4,500 yuan (681 US dollars) a year by the beginning of 2017.

The Chinese version of this story is written by Chen Xiaozhong and translated into English by Huang Wenjuan. And the story is sourced from the United Front Work Deparment of the Communist Party of China (CPC)Sichuan Provincial Committee.