Towering mountains ring Longmu village, blocking people and services from the outside and keeping the residents locked in a battle with poverty.
The village has only 12 families, all squeezed in nine shabby sheds made of bamboo and wood.
Before electricity became available in 2009, villagers used kerosene lamps for generations.
Life in Longmu village is just a snapshot of more than five million impoverished people in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, where most residents of the country's key ethnic groups live.
Data from National Bureau of Statistics showed that the region's 12 resident ethnic minorities account for nearly a quarter of its 47.54 million population.
The national poverty reduction strategy has focuses on mountainous areas, but the fact that the poor are dispersed throughout Guangxi's remote mountains makes poverty alleviation difficult.
The Chinese government pledged to enact more support policies to lift the country's 70 million poor people above the poverty line by 2020, according to President Xi Jinping at the Global Poverty Reduction and Development Forum in Beijing last month.
Poverty relief remains a top priority for China and the central government will hold a Poverty Alleviation and Development Conference on Nov. 26, showing the government's will in the fight against poverty, especially helping ethnic minorities out of poverty.
LIFE OF THE POOR
Nonghua village is located in Du'an Yao Autonomous County in Hechi City, northwest Guangxi, where the Yao minority makes up 60 percent of its 700 population.
Girls change their fate by getting married with someone outside the village, but Nonghua seldom welcomes in a bride, men here are too poor to have wives.
Luo Anhua, 43, is still single. He had a girlfriend who is also of Yao nationality from a nearby village, but she left him because of the extreme poverty.
While his 40-year-old younger brother Luo Anshun has never experienced any romance.
The brothers live together with their 70-year-old mother in a wood- roof shed. They have to crowd in on three beds in front of a fire, as chilly winds seep in through their bamboo walls.
"We are too old, and look at this place we live, no one would marry us." Luo Anhua said with despair in his voice.
The situation in Nonghua is not an exception. Just more than 150 kilometers south lies Longmu village, Du'an Yao Autonomous County.
Two years ago, villager Peng Yujie's 19-year-old son left Longmu to work as a migrant worker. Peng hasn't heard from his son since.
