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May 16, 2017

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Qinghai farmers get rich with noodles

FARMERS in northwest China’s Qinghai Province are casting off poverty by investing in a local specialty — hand-pulled noodles.

The provincial human resources and social security department said, Qinghai’s hand-pulled noodle businesses generated a revenue of 18 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion) across China last year, meaning the province’s migrant workers made a combined salary of nearly 4 billion yuan.

Most of those engaged in the noodle business are from Qinghai’s Haidong City, one of the poorest areas in China, where there are boundless mountains, deep valleys as well as being well known for prolonged droughts.

In recent years, government support has seen an increasing number of local farmers go to big cities to open noodle restaurants.

“In a poverty-stricken family with fewer than five members, as long as one of them is in the noodle business, all of them can shake off poverty,” said Yang Yi, head of the HRSSD.

The provincial government has granted loans worth 1.12 billion yuan to around 15,000 Haidong locals in recent years to help them start up in business. Around 90 agencies outside Qinghai have emerged to help their migrants obtain business certificates, get market information and assist in their children’s education.

By the end of 2016, Qinghai’s farmers had opened around 29,000 noodle restaurants in 280 Chinese cities, accounting for 40 percent of all noodle businesses in China.

The restaurants employed 182,000 Qinghai farmers, with their annual income per capita exceeding 20,000 yuan on average.

Last year, about 4,000 poor farmers newly employed in the business shook off poverty.


 

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