After living in mud-brick huts for generations, people in Bangoin county, in the north pasturing area of the Tibet autonomous region, moved into new concrete houses with the help of the government's Comfortable Housing Project.
Local resident Dondrup told China Daily that poor Tibetan herdsmen had to live in black tents made from yak hair.
The nomadic life sounds exotic and even romantic to travelers, but Tibetans in our county are drifting in a harsh environment where the average altitude is 4,900 meters and the temperature is merely zero degrees, she said. Everybody wants to live in safe buildings with heating, running water and electric lights.
So far, 80 percent of the 2,314 residents in Dondrup's village have moved into their new homes, and by the end of 2015, all residents in Bangoin county will be living in safe and comfortable houses. According to the local authority, each household has been provided with a subsidy of more than 20,000 yuan ($3,090) to build a new house. People can choose the location of their houses to watch their cattle and meadow.
According to a report by the Tibet autonomous region, since the government launched the Comfortable Housing Project in 2006, a total of 1.4 million farmers and herdsmen in 274,800 families have moved to safe and comfortable housing with per-capita living space of 24 square meters.
Many Tibetans, especially farmers and herdsmen in remote areas, used to live in poor conditions, and the Comfortable Housing Project greatly improved their livelihood, said Qiangba Puncog, head of the standing committee of the autonomous region's people's congress.
