PAIRED FOR PROSPERITY

Recently, Zhang Junning, 31, bought a car. This was unimaginable six years ago, when his family was still living in poverty.

At that time, he had just moved from Xihaigu, an impoverished mountainous region in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China, to Minning Town some 300 km away.

Away from the previous life of traditional farming, he was at a loss in his new surroundings in the beginning. All he could do was odd jobs like working on construction sites and he could barely make ends meet.

But the pressure was