YINCHUAN, July 5 (Xinhua) -- On the Loess Plateau, wedding guests arrived at a cave dwelling carrying buckets of water, with every drop saved for months so the bride could enjoy a proper bath before her big day.
Then, moments before the ceremony, she ran away.
The scene is fictional, but the hardship behind it is real.
The scene is part of "Seeing Minning," a village-wide theatrical experience featuring 36 performances and over 600 minutes of immersive performances. It opened on July 1 in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China. Set among reconstructed cave homes, dusty lanes and courtyards, it recreates the journey of families who left the drought-stricken Xihaigu region to build new lives in Minning Town.
Xihaigu is one of China's driest areas. Annual rainfall there ranges from 260 to 400 millimeters, while evaporation soars to 2,200 millimeters. Per capita water resources in Xihaigu account for about 8 percent of the national average, while China's per capita water resources are only 35 percent of the global average.
Locals recall lining up at dawn at a spring where water came out drop by drop. "At 6 a.m. we'd queued and by 10 a.m. we still hadn't filled our buckets," one migrant remembered.
Extreme drought made even basic survival a struggle there, let alone development.
Starting in the 1980s, the government launched a massive relocation program, moving about 1.23 million people from inhospitable areas to settlements that could be developed with access to water, roads and opportunities, including Minning Town near the regional capital Yinchuan.
The government invested in essential infrastructure: pumping stations to bring water from the Yellow River for irrigation and daily use, along with roads and electricity.
Migrants, in turn, began their "second start," improving saline soil, learning greenhouse farming and introducing industries like winemaking. Over the past decades, the settlement grew into a prosperous community and became one of China's most celebrated examples of rural transformation.
In 2025, the per capita disposable income of Minning Town's residents exceeded 20,000 yuan (roughly 3,000 U.S. dollars), nearly 40 times the figure in 1997, when the first migrants arrived.
For many of the performers, the story is deeply personal.
Liu Yanqin, 54, moved from Xihaigu to Minning Town in 1996. She recalled hauling muddy water from deep wells and guarding every precious drop when she lived in Xihaigu. "We're performing the lives we actually lived," she explained.
Today, she lives in a spacious apartment in Minning Town. Her three children have stable jobs, and she has fulfilled a childhood dream: becoming an actress. "When I stand on stage, I become the main character of my own life."
Liu is one of many local residents, mostly first-generation migrants, who appear in the production. Rather than relying on professional actors, the creative team cast people who had lived through this history.
"They don't need to act. They simply show us how they used to live," said chief director Liu Zheng.
His team spent over a month interviewing former migrants, collecting stories that often moved them to tears. Many props, such as household items, farm tools and furniture, were donated by local families. "We're not creating stories. We're collecting them," Liu added.
Visitors move through the recreated village streets as the story unfolds around them.
For Zhang Wanting, a 20-year-old student from Beijing, the experience brought a little-known chapter of China's recent past to life. "I knew nothing about the migration from Xihaigu before coming here. It made me realize how precious every drop of water was and how much people endured."
Beyond its cultural value, the project has created jobs for locals as actors, guides, artisans and hospitality workers, while drawing visitors to nearby shops, restaurants and guesthouses.
But for director Liu, preserving memory matters more than commercial success.
"We can't fully recreate what that generation went through," he said. "Real life was far harder than anything we can put on stage. But if these stories help people appreciate what they have today, then the work we have done serves the purpose."
Zhao Jiale, a 26-year-old visitor from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China, said the performances strengthened her resolve to work in rural communities after graduation. "Seeing how people's lives have changed is inspiring. I hope I can also contribute to making rural communities a better place to live." ■
