Backpackers opened villagers' eyes to region's tourism potential

"The lobbying was an arduous battle - eight mouths versus more than 200," said Huang Dashan, Party chief of the Pona village committee, recalling the difficulty he and seven colleagues had to persuade the villagers to demolish their old adobe homes in 2005 to make way for new home inns.

Pona, a mountainous hamlet in South China's Bama, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, is known as the home of longevity - about 100 centenarians live among its 250,000 residents - instead of poverty, though half its people lived on less than $1 a day just six years ago.

Most of Pona's 200-some farmers were among the disadvantaged. Huang attributes the poverty to Pona's isolation.