Feature

Gaoxigou is one of the villages lying at the west side of Jinjihe River, Mizhi prefecture, Yulin City, north of Shanxi province, China. It is 4 square kilometers large (including 1.8 kilometers square arable land) with about 520 people. It can be said as a small village.
This village is known of making a success on forestations and flood preventions. For instance, its rate of covered by grass and trees has climbed to 69.8%, (the average rate in Mizhi is 24.6%, though), which prevents the erosion peculiar to Loess Plateau. When a flood took place nearby, they say the water of river in this village was not muddy.

The reason for this succes is because of their adoption of “三三制(three one-third system)”. This is a system that means separating the arable lands into three groups, namely, for crops, grass and forests. Therefore, you can see green even in the winter, and it protects land from heavy rains. In addition, it enables the compost to be concentrated on the farmland by having decreased arable land, and at the same time, there is also an effect of suppressing the use of the chemical fertilizer. Some farmers such as village chiefs have obtained the authorization of the brand of "Pollution-free vegetable" with which the restrictions are severer than "Green food". The "three one-third system” has been introduced by “人民日報(People's Daily)” as 《the policy》 of the agriculture of the whole country in November, 1979.

Now that this village is largely depending upon pastoral income much more than that of agricultural income, the average proceeds of this village have got more 2-3times than that of other villages (while grapes, soybeans, and so on which are relatively expensive products are 2-3yuan per 500g, wool is 100yuan per 500g and mutton is over 400yuan for one). On the top of it, education assistances of 20yuan a day for one child are granted when they have a child at the age of compulsory education (In September, 2006). This is a respectable income for this region. Lastly, they have intention to promote the sightseeing business in the near future.

History

In 1940’s, Gaoxigou was a poverty-stricken village. As much as 20kg a mu (about 6.67a) couldn’t be taken, and 3/4 of the arable land in this village belonged to the landowner of another village, and 1/3 or more of the amounts of the harvest was exploited. Therefore, it eked out a living by begging to other villages at that time. The land reform which was done with the hand of the Communist party in the late 1940's, made the local government in the village and undergoes a transfiguration. First of all, "GaoZuyu" ,the first president of this village, did the flood control. As a result, it only could reduce flood-damage temporally, however, and they collapsed at once when it rains heavily.

Gaozuyu thought that the development of the slope is necessary to have the agricultural harvests stabilized, and went to the next village to learn the technology of horizontal terraced paddy fields. It improved the harvest for 1 mu land considerably, and at the same time it decreased the crops being flooded. But it is also true that making the slopes where crops were not originally planted into fields surely went to destroy, or at least damage the ecosystem of Loess Plateau.
The Mizhi government came to hang out an unreal policy and the norm when the Dayuejin (Large Progress) started in 1958 in China. GaoZuyu did not follow the many of them however, and continued development only within the range of not interrupting their cultivation. At that time, upper class criticized him.
While arable land increased gradually, GaoZuyu noticed compost got shorter and shorter, so he decided to increase the number of domestic animals, such as donkeys. Naturally, the more they had domestic animal, the more they needed a large amount of pasture. Then, he proclaimed to use the slope that couldn’t be used for agriculture into pasture. This is the start of "three one-third system". Thus, the amount of pasture that was originally fields for crops had climbed 800mu in 1961. In addition, they requested saplings such as Pinetree, Robinia pseudoacacia, and the poplars to the nation in 1960-1970's. This way, forestation activity had got started. It became ecology woods, which remains now.

In 1978, the reform openness policy was adopted in whole China; on the contrary, Gaoxigou had been forced to spend the time of the misfortune for a while. 生産責任制(production responsibility system) had propagated to other villages, while Gaoxigou had not, because of their success on controlling the ecosystems. The dissatisfaction grew among them, and finally, the woods owned by the government had cut down illegally, which had never occurred. The prefectural administration thought that so serious, that finally decided the end of the group ownership system. However, there remained some problems. These problems were caused by their ecology woods, ironically. Because these woods belonged to arable field, and this meant they had to pay the agricultural tax (abolished in 2004). They faced to decide whether they should divide the ecology woods or not. As a result, they didn’t divide. The leading members regarded this way: “a nameless village, Gaoxigou got famous because they planted trees and grasses. If no woods, it would bring about a worse result. This logic, even though not all the villagers had agreed, but somehow managed to complain them. This is why the ecology woods have remained till today.

When the 退耕還林(refraining from cultivation and planting trees) policy was started in the Mizhi prefecture in 1999, Gaoxigou came into the limelight again. This policy was, from the very first step, said to have problems that after the end of the subsidy, people would start cultivation again(nation would pay for ecology woods for 8 years, and economy woods 5 years). From this point of view, the Gaoxigou’s preservation of woods since 60’s is greatly remarking, and makes this village a model among the Chinese agriculture.