A remote village in southwest China's Yunnan Province has shaken off poverty under a tourism development scheme designed to advance sustainable development, which has steered its villagers toward a better live.

Azheke is a small village in Yunnan's Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, home to around 60 households that lies on China's remote southwestern border.

In 2018, per capita annual income of the village was only 420 U.S. dollars, and extreme poverty forced half of the able-bodied villagers to leave to find work elsewhere.

But all this changed the same year when a team of experts from Sun Yat-sen University, a prestigious university in south China's Guangdong Province, proposed the "Azheke Plan", aimed at achieving sustainable development by promoting local tourism.

Tourism has since become a popular business for villagers of Azheke. The influx of visitors has helped the villagers shake off poverty and preserve their traditional ethnic culture at the same time.

A year after the "Azheke Plan" launched, the village was declared out of poverty, but to make its development sustainable, Azheke needed professionals to run its tourism businesses.

Ma Youde, a young villager, was encouraged and returned home. He now helps run a homestay business and has also launched an assortment of folk culture-related activities to attract more tourists.

"My name is Ma Youde. I'm from Azheke village. I studied tourism management in college. This year I returned home to help manage a homestay hotel. Azheke is a small village with only 60 or so households. People felt they'd never make any money here. So, usually they chose to leave," said Ma.

With the plan panning out, villagers have seen income increase without having to leave home as they could seek job opportunities on their doorstep nowadays.

"I was working in the prefecture. I didn't want to be too far from home. I called my family every night to check up on the older members and ask about the children's schooling. After the tourism company was set up, I returned here to work. These days I'm feeling more at ease, as I can go straight home after work," said a villager.

As the first college graduate to return, Ma believes he made the right choice to return home.

"As the village is still developing, many people from other villages have come to help us. I think it is the right thing for me to return home and make it a better place," said Ma.