DREAMS VS. REALITY

Liu Yunxia deliberately put on a worn-out jacket for her wedding and cried all the way to her husband's home.

At 20, the peasant woman from Gansu's Zhuanglang county shared the Cinderella dreams of her city peers. Her Mr. Right was anyone but the illiterate peasant her parents had chosen for her.

Five years into her marriage, Liu narrowly survived meningitis. When she woke up from a coma, she saw her husband's tearful eyes staring at her anxiously. The look in his eyes instantly aroused her love -- as well as her dream to be an actress.

In 2008, Liu decided to share her story. In two years, she completed a playbook for a TV drama based on her own experiences. An amateur director and actress, she invited all the villagers to join the production.

"It's one of the dreams of my younger days that has come true," she said. "I hope my drama will be shown on national TV someday."

Three decades of poverty relief has enabled multitudes of people in Sanxi to achieve their dreams.

About 1.6 million people have moved out of the most uninhabitable areas in the remote mountains of Sanxi and built new homes near the Yellow River, China's second longest waterway.

When the new settlers from Ningxia's Tongxin county finally dug an irrigation ditch for their cropland, they put down their spades and broke into tears: never before had they seen so much water.

They named their new village "Pear Blossom," though the saplings they planted had just begun to sprout.

Still, life in Sanxi remains tough, as the fight against poverty and natural disasters is expected to last.

Last month, an unexpected rain triggered flash floods and landslides that killed dozens in Minxian county, one of the driest areas in Gansu province.

The disaster affected 358,000 people, and forced the evacuations of 30,000.

"The local ecology is so fragile that it cannot even stand the much-needed rainwater," said Yang Zixing, a village official who stood at the forefront of the disaster relief efforts.

Last year's national poverty relief conference has listed Liupanshan, a drought-hit, mountainous area in the Sanxi region, as a core area for the central government's support from now to 2020.