Editor's note: This is the second of a series of special reports China Daily will publish in the coming weeks focusing on efforts to eradicate poverty and raise living standards in the country's rural areas, especially among members of the nation's ethnic groups.
Sonam Tenzin has a clear understanding of what modern material wealth would mean to him: treatment and medication for his elderly, disabled mother, and his aunt and uncle; repaying his mortgage; and a good education for his two sons.
However, Tenzin lives in Nyingchi, a prefecture-level city in the area around the Yarlung Zangbo River basin in the southeast of the Tibet autonomous region, where making a living has never been easy.
Most residents live on the meager crops they grow on the sparse farmland and the money earned from selling the matsutake mushrooms they pick in the local forests.
The 27-year-old Tibetan is separated from his wife, so he singlehandedly supports his sons and his three aging relatives.
"We are just getting by. After all, I have to manage all the ins and outs myself," he said.
Last year, the family's situation went from bad to worse when their house was badly damaged by fire. Despite help from a support fund established by the regional government, Tenzin had to take out a bank loan of 60,000 yuan ($8,700) to repair the building.
Authorities estimate that 590,000 people -- about 20 percent of Tibet's population - are still living below the government's designated annual poverty threshold of 2,300 yuan in dispensable income.
Like Tenzin, most of those badly affected by poverty live in the region's geographical margins, challenged by the harsh natural environment and an underdeveloped transportation infrastructure that makes traveling difficult.
Nyima, deputy head of the Nyingchi office for poverty alleviation, said isolation is one of the main problems for the region's poorest inhabitants.
"Some people live on high mountains and others in deep valleys that are too harsh to provide a decent life. Many have long been troubled by illness or disability," he said, adding that much of the remaining poverty in Nyingchi, which has a population of about 250,000, centers on households lacking able-bodied workers.
However, there are many cases in which villagers don't try hard enough to change their lives, according to Nyima, who like many Tibetans uses just one name.
"We have been trying to set a good example and introduce them to good programs, but those with the initiative to improve their own lives have probably already done so," he said.
