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 Local residents using tap water for the first time.
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Dongxiang in the remote mountains of Northwest China's Gansu province is the only autonomous county for the ethnic Dongxiang people.
Its 279,600 residents, who earn survive by breeding goats and planting potatoes and apricots, continually suffer from drought and poverty in the unyielding land.
About 87 percent of the scattered farmland is dry land on mountain slopes, with each farmer cultivating less than a quarter acre on average.
According to a report released by the Dongxiang county government in 2010, the average annual income of farmers is 1,602 yuan, or about $230.
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Its team especially formed to assist the impoverished country has managed some 3.1 million yuan in funding over the past decade and helped found nine elementary schools and a high school.
More than 5,200 poor students in local schools have been helped by 340,000 yuan in donations from China Daily.
As well, eight elementary school teachers were sponsored to attend a 10-day training course in Shanghai in 2005.
The newspaper's staff donated 200,000 yuan to help 33 families to repair their houses badly damaged in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
China Daily's total donation to help in the county's development over the past 12 years has now surpassed 5 million yuan.
To help the county gain assistance from the international community, China Daily introduced Dongxiang county to the world with four pages of supplements during the Global Conference on Poverty Reduction in June 2004.
In October 2004, six China Daily journalists went to the county and reported the local conditions and problems.
As a result, people from home and abroad began to offer help to Dongxiang.
In 2009, an irrigation canal was completed in the county, which is now helping ease the county's dire water shortfall.
