Medicinal herb helps boost rural livelihoods

In Shizhu Tujia autonomous county under Chongqing, its 388,200 residents are mainly located in the Wushan Mountains, comprised mainly of hilly countryside.

With a 700-year history in cultivating coptis — a small genus of low-elevation perennial herbs having yellow rhizomes and white or yellow flowers — the county has boosted its production scale and yield to take up about 60 percent of China's total and 50 percent of the global supply.

The plant, whose rhizomes are a well-known Chinese medicinal herb, now generates over 1.28 billion yuan ($180.2 million) of income each year with a cultivation area of some 3,870 hectares, producing 3,000 metric tons annually.