Tibet 鈥榲egetable villages鈥 changing lives
Print Edition
EARLY in the morning, Li Shouyuan put on rubber shoes and hurried to his greenhouses to harvest vegetables.
“It is a key period for picking and selling zucchinis these days, as the prices are good. There is no time to lose,” said the villager in Jang Village in Chushur County of Lhasa, the capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. With the fast development of agricultural infrastructure, Jang Village has become a renowned “vegetable village.”
In old Tibet, vegetables used to be a luxury and were eaten only by the upper class. Now, vegetables are put on the dining tables of all households, providing good incomes for growers like Li.
Penpa, one of Li’s fellow villagers, is also a witness to the development of the change. “Now, we can eat all kinds of fresh vegetables, including many fashionable ones like cherry tomatoes and okra. In the past, no one would have expected to be able to eat them.”
Before the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951, eating vegetables was the privilege of serf-owners and other lords. Many serfs had never tasted vegetables in their lives.
Over the past 70 years, China’s central authorities have made the supply of vegetables apriority to improve people’s lives. Through the building of vegetable-production bases, capacity has significantly improved, overcoming constraints such as the climate.
In 2020, the vegetable planting area in Tibet was 25,820 hectares, and the annual output was 843,400 tons. The days when vegetables were hard to get and more expensive than meat are long a thing of the past.
“Chushur County has not only enriched people’s ‘vegetable basket’ through the development of the vegetable industry over the past years, but also fattened their wallets,” said Tashi Yangzom, deputy director of the county’s bureau of agriculture and rural affairs.
In April 2020, Li and his wife spent more than 70,000 yuan (US$10,800) to rent four greenhouses in the village. This year, he expects to earn about 200,000 yuan from them.
The increase in vegetable consumption and an improved diet are believed to be behind an increasing life expectancy, from an average 35.5 in 1951 to 71.1 in 2020.
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