Government plan provides shelter
Source: Xinhua |
January 31, 2011, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
CHEN and her mentally handicapped son moved into their newly finished home last December. Shortly afterwards, a month-long cold front with heavy snow hit their hometown, as well as the majority of southern China.
It would have been "terrible" to stay in the old home in such cold weather, said 66-year-old Chen Houlian, a villager from Tongzi County in -Guizhou Province.
Behind the new home stood their old adobe cottage, with visible cracks on the clay walls. Wooden doors and window frames of that cottage were covered with black smoke due to more than 40 years of indoor cooking, while those of the new house were painted bright blue.
Chen's family was one of the poorest in town. The farmland they grew crops on barely produced enough corn and cabbage to meet their needs, and the minimum living subsistence allowance of 2,200 yuan (US$334) each year was their total annual income.
They would never be able to afford to build a new home on their own without receiving financial aid from a government project, said Jin Jing, deputy head of the county.
Chen's new house cost over 40,000 yuan. They received 20,000 yuan from the project and 5,000 from the local federation of people with disabilities. The rest was borrowed from relatives and neighbors.
Five pairs of red couplets were posted by each door and window to express their -gratitude to all the people who had offered help.
On the day they moved in, Chen held an outdoor banquet for the entire village using borrowed money to mark the happiest event this family had witnessed for many decades.
The government-funded project was launched over two years ago, after a deadly snow storm hit southern China in 2008, damaging over 2 -million houses.
In Guizhou alone, over 600,000 families had finished building new homes by the end of 2010 with help from that project, as over 4.7 billion yuan was allocated to subsidize this building.
The project was part of China's efforts to build its social-security-based housing system, which also includes affordable housing, low-rent housing and public rental housing programs to meet the needs of low-income people amid surging property prices across the country.
It would have been "terrible" to stay in the old home in such cold weather, said 66-year-old Chen Houlian, a villager from Tongzi County in -Guizhou Province.
Behind the new home stood their old adobe cottage, with visible cracks on the clay walls. Wooden doors and window frames of that cottage were covered with black smoke due to more than 40 years of indoor cooking, while those of the new house were painted bright blue.
Chen's family was one of the poorest in town. The farmland they grew crops on barely produced enough corn and cabbage to meet their needs, and the minimum living subsistence allowance of 2,200 yuan (US$334) each year was their total annual income.
They would never be able to afford to build a new home on their own without receiving financial aid from a government project, said Jin Jing, deputy head of the county.
Chen's new house cost over 40,000 yuan. They received 20,000 yuan from the project and 5,000 from the local federation of people with disabilities. The rest was borrowed from relatives and neighbors.
Five pairs of red couplets were posted by each door and window to express their -gratitude to all the people who had offered help.
On the day they moved in, Chen held an outdoor banquet for the entire village using borrowed money to mark the happiest event this family had witnessed for many decades.
The government-funded project was launched over two years ago, after a deadly snow storm hit southern China in 2008, damaging over 2 -million houses.
In Guizhou alone, over 600,000 families had finished building new homes by the end of 2010 with help from that project, as over 4.7 billion yuan was allocated to subsidize this building.
The project was part of China's efforts to build its social-security-based housing system, which also includes affordable housing, low-rent housing and public rental housing programs to meet the needs of low-income people amid surging property prices across the country.
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