XINING, July 17 (Xinhua) -- Two hours west of Xining, the capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province, lies Ganshuwan Village in Jingyang Town, Datong County. In the fields, pea shoots and choy sum flourish, as farmers carrying baskets move briskly between the crop rows.
For decades, the cold, arid climate and long winters on the northeastern edge of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau made farming a constant struggle. "We could only grow drought-resistant crops like corn and rapeseed, and we worried every year about the weather. Annual income was just a few thousand yuan," recalled villager Wang Cunying, 63.
Faced with harsh conditions, villagers spontaneously formed farming cooperatives -- a move soon backed by county authorities. With support from agricultural enterprises, they adopted plastic mulch film and arched greenhouses to shield crops from spring and autumn chills, and introduced hardier, disease-resistant seedlings to extend the growing season.
Livestock manure from local farms now serves as organic base fertilizer, while integrated water and fertilizer irrigation systems precisely regulate water and nutrient supply for crops. The once-daunting cold has become a competitive edge.
"At 2,500 meters above sea level, we have a large temperature difference between day and night, abundant sunshine, unpolluted soil and access to clean water from mountain snowmelt," says Li Hanlin, head of Jingyang Town. "Our vegetables accumulate more dry matter and have a crisp, sweet taste. When summer heat cuts production in southern China, our plateau climate gives us an off-season advantage."
The cold climate also means fewer pests, eliminating the need for chemical pesticides.
The cool-season vegetable brand soon attracted customers from eastern and southern China. Last year, the local cooperative signed a five-year contract with a food company in Hong Kong, generating 5.6 million yuan (about 824,000 U.S. dollars) in sales revenue. With efficient logistics, fresh produce can reach Hong Kong markets in just 48 hours, or within 24 hours by air.
The village is now building cold storage and processing facilities to support chilled shipping and develop dehydrated vegetables and hotpot ingredients for value chain extension.
Wang now works for the cooperative. "Now my husband and I have leased our 10 mu (about 0.67 hectares) to the cooperative, earning 10,000 yuan in rent. We also work here. I can do everything from picking to packing and make another 20,000 to 30,000 yuan a year."
Datong County's total vegetable planting area has reached 80,000 mu. Across Qinghai, 312 high-altitude cool-season vegetables and Hong Kong-destined vegetable bases have been built. In the first five months of this year, Qinghai exported 2,872.6 tonnes of cool-season vegetables, up 58.5 percent year on year.
While vegetable fields flourish in eastern Qinghai, the landscape looks vastly different 700 kilometers west. Golmud City was once an ecologically fragile Gobi desert plagued by drought and sandstorms.
Farmer Zhou Xuefa remembers the hard times. "Growing grain, I earned just 400 to 800 yuan per mu. I worked under the sun and wind all year, but life never got better."
Determined to change his life, Zhou joined a study tour to Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China's renowned goji-growing region. Goji berry, also known as wolfberry, is a traditional Chinese medicinal plant. The numbers caught his attention: dried goji berries sold for about 40 yuan per kilogram. Though yields were modest in the first few years, a mature plantation could generate up to 16,000 yuan per mu.
Zhou invested his life savings to introduce the "Goji Seedling No. 1" from Ningxia. To his surprise, the goji berries from his own farmland had a better taste than what he had sampled in Ningxia.
Golmud, sitting at 2,800 meters above the sea level, with 10 hours of daily sunlight and a diurnal temperature range of 12 degrees Celsius, offers pristine water and ideal conditions for premium goji berries with a bright and plump quality.
Behind this higher revenue lies more meticulous care. He prunes the bushes every winter and continuously upgrades to organic varieties with larger, redder fruits. His plantation has now expanded to 80 mu, generating annual sales revenue of nearly 1 million yuan.
Zhou is one of over 4,100 goji-growing households in Golmud. Local agricultural and meteorological departments provide technical guidance and weather alerts, from field management and pest control to early warnings of sandstorms and rain, to help farmers protect their crops and stabilize yields.
According to statistics bureau of Golmud, the city's goji planting area reached 105,300 mu in 2025, up 4.3 percent from the previous year, with output hitting 26,800 tonnes, a 7.7 percent increase.
Before the August harvest, Zhou visited an agricultural reclamation group in Golmud to negotiate berry purchases. The group has signed framework agreements with three surrounding townships to buy fresh and dried berries from local growers, while providing standardized planting training to farmers, said Xing Liangde, deputy director of the group's bio-industrial park.
The model directly creates over 1,000 jobs and indirectly benefits more than 10,000 people.
The group has partnered with research institutions to introduce 10 advanced production lines, including NFC cold-pressing technology, and develop over 50 products, from goji puree to freeze-dried powder.
From subsistence farming to technology-driven agriculture, from single-crop production to integrated value chains, Qinghai's farmers are no longer just surviving but thriving. What was once dusty, low-yielding land is now a colorful patchwork of green vegetable fields and red goji berry orchards.
As Li said: "We used to fear we couldn't sell. Now we fear we can't grow enough." ■
