Despite a summer full of less-than-desirable temperatures, approximately 50 thousand people from around China gave their taste buds a workout during last Saturday’s 3rd Baise-Tiandong Mango Cultural Festival.

Tiandong, a county in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, is known as “the hometown of the mango”. The county boasts various types of mangoes, with 120,000 mu of mango fields and an annual output reaching 300 million tons. It’s said that Tiandong can provide one mango for 1.3 million Chinese people every year.

“Mango-shaped light, beautiful Miss Mango and mango floats—it’s all about mango,” said Chen, a tourist who came to the festival from Guangdong province. “It’s awesome. I feel like I go into a mango world.”

The three-day festival—from July 25 to 27—is all about celebrating Tiandong’s mangoes, which help promote the wealth of hundreds of thousands of farmers in the county.

“Growing mangoes has changed my life,” said Guo Yaotian, a Yao minority farmer who used to grow corn. Four years ago, under the local government’s policy that encouraged building the Tiandong mango brand, Guo began to plant mangoes.

Guo now has 20 mu of land growing two kinds of mangoes, both species from Taiwan. His crops generated 50,000 yuan last year, which has tripled over the past four years. “This is my first time seeing so many people in my hometown. I’m really proud of it,” said Guo.

Now Guo is busy building his new home—a three-storey house. “There is no doubt that planting mangoes has become a way to wealth in Tiandong,” Guo’s son said, who having just finished college, has decided to go back to Tiandong to develop planting techniques.

In 2008, the net income per capita of Tiandong’s farmers increased by 14.7% year-on-year, according to statistics released by the local government.

“In Tiandong, it’s like spring all year round,” said Wang Xiyi, Tiandong’s secretary. “That’s right. Tiandong is like a spring, a spring of hope.”

(China Daily July 28, 2009)