Left: Tang Xiumei, who works at an orange orchard in Duyang town, says she finds watering plants easier than her previous factory work. Right: An employee of a Guangxi-based company at a drilling site.

Nationwide, under the current poverty standard, which was set in 2010, 43.35 million fall below the line.

But Nongjing has found a novel way to raise its standard of living - scorpion farming - mainly to supply venom for use in traditional Chinese medicine.

The village's scorpion farm, which was established in September with 1 million yuan in government funding, now employs 10 locals full-time and several others part-time, including four women, says Qiu Xiaojun, a 34-year-old civil servant. He has been assigned by the Guangxi government to oversee daily operations.

"Once trained, a person can earn between 2,000 and 3,000 yuan a month here," Qiu says. "We are providing the villagers with an income source as well as technical knowledge they can use to set up their own businesses in future."

More than 2,000 people live in 10 villages in the vicinity. The residents raise pigs or poultry and grow corn, all mostly for personal consumption, as the remote location limits access to outside markets. The karst topography limits farming. Groundwater is scarce.

In Nongjing, the Manchurian scorpion - Mesobuthus martensii - is one of the main varieties bred artificially. Found in China and other parts of East Asia, where moisture levels are sufficient, a full-grown arachnid can be 2 to 6 centimeters long and has sharp pincers and a deadly telson, or tail tip.

A female is usually larger than a male, and natural breeding can take two years. But the process is completed in only a few months at the Nongjing village farm.

Qiu says the farm expects to earn more than 1.5 million yuan from sales this year. The current market price for a kilogram of scorpions is 930 yuan. Nongjing is working to meet demand in Guangdong, Henan and Shangdong provinces, where the bulk of the arachnids will be sold for pharmaceutical purposes.

Scorpion toxins are used in traditional Chinese medicine to "smooth the flow of blood in the human body". The arachnid is also eaten as a snack.

"The community is working together on this project," says Lan Tianting, 25, whose one job is to segregate female and male scorpions. "We want to build a brand around it."

As China seeks, by 2020, to end the worst poverty nationwide, such projects are expected to help the poor, not only through short-term earnings but by building entrepreneurial skills for ongoing use.

In March, the central government's work report said 12.4 million had been lifted out of poverty last year. Financial aid for poverty reduction programs has exceeded 100 billion yuan.

Hu Angang, an influential economist from Tsinghua University, says China is meeting poverty reduction targets ahead of the schedule provided in its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). He predicts that by the end of the decade, households in the country will be identified for assistance on the basis of their minimum insurance coverage.

Scorpion sex-identifier Lan says he returned in hope of improved local employment. Most of his peers work outside Dahua county, where the village is located. He attended college in Guilin, a tourism center in Guangxi.

Lan's 42-year-old colleague, Meng Zhiyao - despite coming from a different background -shares Lan's enthusiasm for the project. Meng, who spent much of his youth in poverty, says he has applied for a low-interest housing loan since he began working with scorpions. He has six children and an elderly mother to care for.

Huang Jing, a senior county official, says farms to raise cows and bamboo rats have also been built in two other villages where poverty alleviation efforts are focused. Last year, 15 million yuan was set aside by the local government to supplement livelihoods in at least six such villages.

Of the county's 460,000 people, some 80,000 live in poverty, according to another official.

Drilling wells

Snaking around a peak, a path brings the village into full view. Harvesting rainwater is an essential part of life in Nongjing, which has struggled with limited groundwater sources for decades.

The area is said to have water trapped in aquifers but extraction has proved difficult in the past. In addition, the mountain rocks often crumble like chalk.

After a failed attempt to drill a well, authorities have decided to dig deeper in the next attempt - at least 280 meters below the surface. A team of four engineers from a Liuzhou-based company in Guangxi pitched a tent in November and look to accomplish the mission of acquiring more water through rain and wind.

A road 11 kilometers long will be constructed to connect the area's villages, says Qiu, the official from the scorpion farm.

In Nongteng - a village of nearly 30 households situated downhill from Nongjing - the county government is encouraging tourism to boost incomes. A few cottages have been painted blue and red to draw city dwellers keen on experiencing the quiet countryside.

Results are mixed: Lan Fanglin, 33, says a room's rent at her hotel is 80 yuan a night and that the business is profitable. But Wei Yuguan, a 48-year-old former plastics factory worker in Nanning, who has managed a neighboring hotel since 2015, says her property gets few customers.

An orchard in the county's Duyang town offers an example of private-public partnership in poverty reduction in this part of Guangxi. Over the past three years, oranges from the joint venture have been sold to retailers in Beijing and Shenzhen and in Qinghai and Shangdong provinces.