Villagers in Ruili thrive on pea slices amid Covid fight

By making Galangpian, or crunchy pea slices, Nonghuan villagers in west Yunnan’s border city of Ruili have obtained a stable income amid the Coivd outbreaks over the past months. 
“Around 20 housewives are making the Galangpian snack that is sold at a price of 50 to 60 yuan per kilogram,” said Shuai Henbai, Party secretary of the Nonghuan village, Ruili’s Jiexiang township.  

“Amid the Covid outbreaks and lockdowns, we did not just waiting for the government subsidies, but relied more on ourselves to secure a living,” noted Shuai, adding some of her fellow villagers have made around 6,000 yuan over the past months via producing Galangpian.

In making Galangpian, a kind of snack specialty of local Dai people, peas are mashed, filtered, boiled and dried into large translucent slices, which are then cut and fried before being served onto the tables.

Through the popular Chinese social networks of WeChat or Douyin, the Dai Galangpian specialty has been sold to the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Shandong and Fujian, according to a report on Yunnan.cn. 

While carrying out production and finding ways to tide over the hard times, locals in Nonghuan did not forget to keep social distancing or put aside other Covid prevention practices.

Nonghuan is a small village that lies near the China-Myanmar border. It is a typical Dai village, with Dai people accounting for more than 90% its total population of 470.
 
Starting on November 16, residents in Ruili are allowed to have certain outdoor activities on the precondition of effective prevention measures, said the city's headquarters for Covid prevention and control.
Source: Xinhua and Yunnan Net; Trans-editing by Yang Xuan and Wang Shixue