Striving for a Relatively Comfortable Life with Fellow-villagers

At Xinglong Village, Jinjiang Town, Shangri-La, Deqen Prefecture, Yunnan Province, when it comes to poverty alleviation, villagers give their compliments to Xia Xuedong, a breeding specialized farmer. Over the past two years after he learnt skills and techniques, Xia Xuedong has opened up a new way in rex rabbit breeding and also led fellow-villagers to strive for a relatively comfortable life.

In 2012, Xia Xuedong, a villager of Xinglong Village got to know rex rabbit breeding by chance and showed strong interest in it. After learning skills and techniques, Xia Xuedong went back to his hometown in 2014. He built breeding houses in his field and introduced rex rabbit to start his breeding career. After two years, Xia Xuedong has been increasingly skillful at rex rabbit breeding and his income has also increased.

At present, Xia Xuedong has more than 700 breeding rabbits in his breeding base with an annual production of over 34,000 commercial rabbits. His rabbits are well acclaimed by businessmen from Sichuan and Zhaotong, and the supply often falls short of demand. Xia Xuedong told the reporter, “There are 48 households having 1000 breeding rabbits as you saw this morning. Now, 110,000 rabbits in our village can be sold.”

Last year, Xia Xuedong who was just on the way to getting rich founded a company and helped 48 households in the village to develop rex rabbit breeding. Currently, the annual production of rex rabbit of the whole village has reached 250,000, providing a way for villagers to increase income.

Yang Cui, a rex rabbit breeder said, “(In addition to farming) my daily income now is RMB 70 to RMB 80. If the economic benefits are better and the number of rex rabbit is larger, I can teach and guide others in rex rabbit breeding.”

Driven by Xinglong Village, Jin Jiang’s rex rabbit breeding is larger in scale. As the “king of rex rabbit”, Xia Xuedong is glad. Meanwhile, he has a new plan for the future. His objectives are to keep developing breeders and strive for developing 200 households in the following year, and make the production of rex rabbit of the whole village reach 480,000.

Xia Xuedong pointed out, there is a sharp day-night temperature difference in Shangri-La, so it is pretty good for fur of rex rabbit. Therefore, I am not worried about the sale of rabbit.