After waking up at around 6 a.m., Yan Binquan and his wife get busy repairing tires in their small shop.

Yan, a villager of Chengguan, a town in Zhouqu County, northwest China's Gansu Province, survived a torrential rain-triggered mudslide that hit the county on Aug. 8, 2010.

The catastrophe left over 1,700 people dead or missing and thousands of others homeless, and caused huge economic losses in the county.

Yan lost his houses and cropland in the mudslide.

He said that at the time he had no idea how he could manage to continue to support a family of seven after losing the cropland, which was their only source of income.

Like Yan, at least 3,300 farmers in Chengguan, one of the county's two major mudslide-battered towns, lost their cropland, said Cao Shenghui, vice head of the town.

At the end of 2011, the provincial government adopted a set of measures such as providing skill training to the farmers and developing new industries and ecological management, in an effort to help local people ward off poverty.

Yan and other farmers who lost their land were given opportunities to participate in free training courses, including vehicle repair, housekeeping and restaurant service courses.

After receiving a half-month of training in vehicle repair, Yan rented a house and opened a tire repair shop with his wife.

Yan has been doing well with his new trade. Over the past few months, he has been earning over 5,000 yuan (784.32 U.S. dollars) per month -- much more than he earned as a farmer.

Cao said 220 rural people that lost their land have secured jobs as housekeepers in cities such Lanzhou, Beijing and Shanghai.

"Each of them can earn an average of around 2,000 yuan per month, which is more profitable than farming back home," Cao said.

Local authorities of Zhouqu said that more than 25,000 local farmers in the county have received vocational training and the county has sent about 10,000 workers to the industrial hubs on the country's eastern and southern coasts.

The local poverty relief office said that apart from organizing training and exporting labor services, industrial projects have also been launched in accordance with the local geographical features.

The county government invested 4 million yuan in building a demonstration base for winter rape planting in June 2011.

A 2,000-hectare planting base for traditional Chinese medicine herbs was also initiated in June last year.

Local authorities told Xinhua that other important measures to help people there have included disaster prevention and ecological restoration projects.

Shi Huaxiong, county head of Zhouqu, said that all cultivated land on sloping fields at an altitude of over 1,800 meters will be converted into forests in an ecological restoration effort.

According to the local government, the county is expected to maintain an annual economic growth rate of 17 percent in the next five years, and local people will see the per capita income rise to 5,740 yuan in 2015, which is 3,000 yuan more than their current income.