Aerial photo shows a corner of Nuodeng ancient village. [Photo/Zhaopufan]

Nuodeng, located in the deep mountains of Yunlong County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, is a Bai village with a history of thousands of years. Nuodeng enjoyed centuries of prosperity thanks to its wealth of salt. There are still many traditional cultures and distinctive ancient buildings there.

A corner of Nuodeng ancient village [Photo/Li Hao]

A woker is inspecting ham at Nuodeng Majinqiao Trading Co., Ltd. [Photo/Zhaopufan]

In Nuodeng, almost every household makes hams. Most of the hams are hand-made and the quality varies from each other, which is hard to form standardized production and industrial development. Since 2013, Xu Kunbin has established a brand "Nuodeng Ham" to help more poor people increase their income with the mode of "e-commerce + poverty alleviation workshop" based on farmer cooperatives. The annual employment volume has reached about 6,000 person-times and indirectly mobilized more than 15,000 villagers around. Therefore, Xu Kunbin has become a famous head of getting rich.

Yang Wusong, the provincial intangible cultural heritage inheritor of making hams,is checking hams. [Photo/Li Hao]

There are tens of thousands of hams hanging to air-dry in Yunlong Nuodeng ham factory. Yang Wusong is the person in charge here and the provincial intangible cultural heritage inheritor of Nuodeng ham-making skill, who has been influenced since childhood. He has mastered the traditional curing skill of Nuodeng ham, improved it in combination with modern science and technology, and obtained a number of invention patents. Over the past 20 years, his team has cured more than 300,000 hams.

Tourists wearing ethnic costumes walk on the stone road in Nuodeng ancient village. [Photo/Li Hao] 

With the increasing popularity and influence of Nuodeng year by year, its transportation is becoming more and more convenient. It has won the title of "Chinese historical and cultural village" and "Chinese traditional village". Tourists also flock to Nuodeng ancient village for leisure.

Yang Ruiyu decorates the house with flowers. [Photo/Zhaopufan]

After graduating from university, Yang Ruiyu, 32, and her husband have been working in the city. Seeing the bright prospects of Nuodeng ancient town, she decided to return home to repair her old house, cure hams and run a homestay in 2021. Yang understood that nothing is perfect. Although she left the bustling city, she can make a difference in her hometown while taking care of the kids and the old.

Yang Ruiyu (first from the left) chats with her family. [Photo/Zhaopufan]

Aerial photo of Nuodeng ancient village [Photo/Zhaopufan]

In the ancient village, birds and insects are singing, flowers are in full bloom, smoke is curling upward from kitchen chimneys and water is murmuring by under the bridges. Whether it is Yang Wusong, who inherits the ham curing skill, Xu Kunbin, who leads the villagers to increase their income and become rich, or Yang Ruiyu, who returns home to start a business, they are participants and beneficiaries of Nuodeng rural revitalization.  

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(Editors: Rachel, Lexi)