Medicinal plants are offering impoverished villages a green way to prosperity

Pristine natural conditions and an ideal altitude have turned a formerly isolated county into a major source of herbs. But the beginnings were far from promising.

Luquan Yi and Miao autonomous county was once so deprived that Qian Shiquan had to leave home to work as a concrete mixing laborer and then a construction contractor in 2000 because there was no way to do to keep his family above water.