Wen Zhixian, deputy head of the Zuoquan county government, said it is calling on residents to tap into the well-preserved natural environment and picturesque landscape of the Taihang Mountains to develop the tourism and catering industries.

The two villages are perched in a 58-km-long valley known as the Taihang Gallery. A road meandering through it connects the villages to the outside world, and locals compare it to an artery for tourism.

Wen said the county government has planted about 288,000 gold-leafed trees of various types on the mountain slopes on both sides of the road in bid to make it a popular route for self-driving tourists and sightseeing cyclists.

To attract tourists and make full use of the area's unique folk song culture, the county government also hosts a folk song party every year.

Liu Erping, director of the county publicity department, said Zuoquan seeks to breathe life into its tourism and make such development more sustainable by holding the folk song activities.

Apart from tourism and cash crops, photovoltaic power generation is another source of income to lift residents out of poverty.

In Lianbi village, which is located on a rugged mountain slope, farmers had lived a hand-to-mouth life for generations before the road was extended to it about 10 years ago.

Guo Yinglin, 64, the village Party secretary, said it now takes less than 20 minutes to reach the county seat by car. In the past, some villagers had never visited it because the journey involved a walk of at least two days.

On the mountains where the land is too infertile to farm, government guidance and subsidies have encouraged villagers to install solar panels. Guo said the "little golden suns", which are connected to the State grid, generate about 1 million yuan each year for the village.

"The 'sun-given' money is exclusively spent on caring for the sick, disabled, low-income and widowed elderly in the village," he said. "Each needy family receives 3,000 yuan a year from it."

Since 2016, the country has invested more than 300 million yuan building dozens of village solar power stations, with an installed gross capacity of 80.27 megawatts, which make full use of the barren mountains and benefit 129 formerly poverty-stricken villages.

Nine years ago, over 20 percent of Zuoquan's 165,700 residents lived in poverty. Thanks to the alleviation efforts, the county put an end to abject rural poverty by April last year.