CHENGDU: Wang Xiao, a 47-year-old farmer in the picturesque village of Lihuagou (meaning "pear flower valley") in Xinjin, a suburban county under the jurisdiction of the capital city of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, earned a net income of more than 2,600 yuan (US$314) from selling home-grown pears last month.

Thanks to the booming pear trade, Wang's family of three could earn nearly 10,000 yuan (US$1,208) this year. But before a cement road linking the village to the county was built in 2001, the Wangs could earn no more than 4,000 yuan (US$483) a year because its inaccessible, hilly road hindered the village's pear trade.

"Before 2001, the annual average income of many of the village's 168 households was much less than the province's annual average although the village is known for its pears in Sichuan," Wang said.

According to Bai Dehui, an official from the Chengdu Communications Bureau, Wang's village is only one of many in Chengdu to have benefited from the municipal government's ambitious project aimed at making all its 4,637 villages accessible to cement or asphalt roads.

"Since it launched the project in 2000, the city has built 4,327 kilometres of cement and asphalt roads to connect 3,907 villages. An additional 1,600 kilometres will be completed this year to connect the remaining 730 villages," he said.

The project is only part of Chengdu's mammoth efforts to upgrade its transport facilities in the past five years. When the Asian financial crisis broke out in 1997, Chengdu decided to launch massive infrastructure construction to propel local economic growth.

Since 1998, the city has invested more than 18 billion yuan (US$2.2 billion) to build nearly 5,000 kilometres of roads and seven major long-distance bus stations.