"As a primary school teacher working in my village, my family was as poor as the local farmers, but a happenstance changed my life," said Ma who is living in Wangjia Village, Ping'an County in northwest Qinghai Province.

"In 1998, I collected some stones with fantastic shapes and colours in the river for my own interest, but one of my collections was bought for 1,000 yuan (US$125) by a tourist who passed through my village and saw my collection. The money he paid was one-fourth of the total annual income of my family at the time," Ma recalled.

Ma Qian and his villagers had found a way to fight poverty and the local government built up a stone market to help them develop fantasy stones as a cultural industry.

Collecting stones is part of traditional Chinese culture, and in Ma's economically depressed village the activity promotes development, said Liu Haiming, official with Ping'an County government.

In Hualong, another county in the province, Ma Ruling, a farmer in Dongyi Village, gained about 120,000 yuan (US$15,000) selling stones in the past five years, according to Long Yumin, director of the county's agriculture bureau.

Qinghai, the starting place of the Yellow River, has some counties along the upper reaches of the river where there are a lot of stones shaped by the river and containing various minerals.

The new industry has not only improved local farmers' living conditions, but also improved local farmers' cultural activities, including education and training in farming technology, said Zhao Zhiying, deputy director of the county's farmer cultural development office.

"The local government helped, with some 100,000 yuan (US$12,500), a village established a reading and entertainment room with a number of books, newspapers, magazines and musical instruments and sporting goods, and give training in farming technology," the official said.

Qinghai started its project in 2003 with trial work in four counties. After three years of development, the project has been one of the key ways for local farmers to get rich, said Qiu Qingshan, director of Qinghai Provincial Party Committee's Publicity Department.

The province has poor natural conditions for farming and husbandry, and has little room for agricultural development.

"We have developed folk singing and dancing performances, folklore tourism, embroidery, paper cutting and ethnic art goods production in the past years in 23 counties, 45 per cent of the total counties in the province," Qiu said.

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