Chinese President Hu Jintao marked the eve of the Year of Pig by frying dough twists, eating dumplings and cutting paper window decorations with poor farmers in the barren countryside of northwestern Gansu Province.

On early Saturday, buses carrying Hu and accompanying officials rocked along the bumpy mountain roads to Daping village of Dingxi City in Gansu, where Hu once visited in 1999 and ordered local officials to work hard on poverty alleviation.

"Dear villagers, I come to wish you a happy new year," Hu said, addressing a crowd of farmers in front of a village house. "I visited Daping eight years ago. Today, I am very pleased to see lots of changes. New houses are erected and plenty of food is stored, which shows the lives of the Daping people have really improved."

In a villager's home, Hu sat with farmers and children, asking about grain production and the family income.

One of the farmers gave the president a full basket of potatoes, telling him that, like many others, his life had improved by planting potatoes.

The lunar New Year of 2007, which starts on February 18, is also the Year of Pig. To most Chinese, pig is considered a symbol of wealth and good fortune.

But fortune comes slowly for farmers in barren Gansu. Last year, the income of each farmer in this northwestern province was estimated at only 2,100 yuan (US$296), far below the 3,587 yuan of national average for the farming population.

Hu has spent the previous three Lunar New Year eves visiting poor residents in the countryside. Last year, he fried rice cakes, drank home-made wine and danced with local villagers in rural Yan'an of Shaanxi Province, also in northwestern China.

A day before Hu's visit to Daping, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made his new year trip to low-income families in Fushun City, northeast China's Liaoning Province.

Wen was shown around a new housing estate, which used to be a shanty town housing mainly coal miners.

"It's the difference between heaven and hell," Wang Hongyu, a resident told the visiting Premier, when comparing the new apartment with his old house, which lacked water, electricity and heating.

It was Wen's second trip to the city, one of the major coal mining centers in the country's old northeastern industrial base, after he visited the place in June 2003.

Following the trip in 2003, Wen issued strong directives to the provincial government, ordering immediate measures to improve the lives of local miners. His order triggered a mass renovation of the province's shanty towns, which formally started in 2005.

By the end of 2006, nearly 1 million people in 11 cities across Liaoning had been relocated to new houses.

Laid-off worker Liu Yongjian still lives in his poky bungalow, which was built in 1958. The area where Liu lives, the Shenggong Community in Dongzhou district, has more than 2,000 low-income families.

Local officials told Wen that the community had been listed within the 2007 renovation plan and all the families would be relocated to new houses this year.

Showing his contract to Wen, Liu said he had handed in 14,000 yuan (about US$1,794) and his 28-square-meter house will be exchanged for a 50-square-meter apartment.

The renovation project is estimated to cost around 20 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) in total, and the Chinese central government has promised to allocate 2.6 billion yuan.

"The relocated residents pay relatively small amounts of money for their new houses. If the floor space is the same as their shanties, it is free. Any area over it has to be bought at a third or half of the market price," said one local official.

At the home of 74-year-old retired worker Zhang Yuanzhou, Wen said that Fushun had contributed 1 billion tons of coal to the country since 1949.

"The Chinese government must solve the problems for workers in the old industrial base. The first step is housing. The second is employment," Wen said.

"Harmony will not be achieved until people live a stable life and enjoy their work," Wen said.

Wen also visited several local factories and extended new year greetings to the workers.

(Xinhua News Agency February 18, 2007)