XIAMEN, China – You often hear stories of people moving from rags to riches, but seldom do you get reports of a very poor rural district shedding its image and moving off to be one of the most prosperous in a country – much less in a huge country like China.

That is true of the Chinese village of Matang, located just on the outskirts of the suburbs of the province of Xiamen, which was up to 1985 known as a village where the people suffered from intense poverty, but is now one of the most prosperous in China because of the vision of one man – Chen Qing Shui.

But it did not happen overnight in the village that was once wracked by poverty and strife when most of the residents had to compete for the scarce job opportunities in an old, outdated factory in the area, according to Huang Shu Hua, a resident of Matang.

“We were the poorest village in the whole area. Because of this poor status, when many of the young men reached marrying age they were refused by the women. Nobody wanted to marry men from Matang,” Huang Shu Hua told the Observer, through a translator. “And no agency wanted to lend any money to the Matang villagers because they were so poor,” she added.

The village experienced a miraculous turnaround, however, after the homecoming of former Matang village resident, Chen Qing Shui. Quite the Cinderella story, Quin Shui had grown up in the village, experiencing first-hand the poverty the village was known for, but had managed in his lifetime to become a multimillion-dollar entrepreneurial success.

Shu Hua said that upon Qing Shui’s return to the village in 1985 he was so disturbed by the poverty he saw that he decided to do something about it and decided to build a new food processing factory for the villagers to work in.

This was done in tandem with the government of China, who at the time was also undertaking to modernise that area of the country, demolishing old decrepit buildings and replacing them with newer, better ones. Quin Shui participated in that process as well.

Today, that factory – Yinlu – is still a part of one of China’s most successful business conglomerates and one of the largest manufacturing facilities of canned food and beverages in both Fujian Province and China.

The factory not only prospered, so did the life of the villagers and gradually the face of the village changed.

The factory is now housed on the Technological Park-Xiamen Yinlu Hi-Tech Park (the company headquarters), which occupies 800,000 square metres.

A number of elaborately designed mansions dot the landscape of the Matang, home to several of Yinlu’s managerial staff. Some residents have however opted to keep their “conservative homes”.

Qing Shui was still being talked about in the once poor village, as villagers who were made shareholders in Yinlu have been passing their shareholdings to younger generations as they get older and retire.

In 1985 the annual income per person was RMB 185 (Chinese currency), now it is RMB 16,000, and the average income is about RMB 5,000, Shu Hua said. “Now everybody wants to marry Matang boys,” she said.

However, mindful to protect the village from a reversal to its former state, the resisents of Matang have opted to maintain a very closed existence, allowing new members to enter the village only via marriage to persons from original families.

Presently, approximately 271 persons live in the village, comprising about 81 families.